Facebook might be updating menus and interfaces left and right, but that sure doesn't mean they make them easier to use in the process. The poor menu design and vague terminology makes it pretty difficult to make changes (or to undo those changes), in many cases. Read on as we help a reader liven up their news feed by returning previously hidden friends to the forefront.
Dear How-To Geek,
This isn't much of a life-or-death problem, to be sure, but it's one that's a bit frustrating. Last year when a lot of my Facebook friends were constantly posting heated political stuff, I started checking the "I don't want to see this" and "Unfollow" entries in my feed a lot. All said and done, I "muted" or whatever you want to call it a whole lot of people. In hindsight, I might have been a bit hasty with the cone of silence and now I'd like to liven the old news feed back up again.
The only problem is... I can't figure out how to do it. I've looked in every menu and sub-menu and I can't find a list of the people I've muted. I found a list of people I've blocked (which has no entries) so that's pretty useless. What do I do? Surely there must be a list I can actually look at, right?
Facebook Frustrated
There is, in fact, a list. You shouldn't feel at all bad for not finding this list because it's hidden in the most ridiculous place that we're 99 percent sure the average use would never accidentally stumble upon. When logged into your Facebook account on a computer (not a mobile device) navigate to your news feed. Look at the list of entries on the far left menu (that's where you'll see things like "News Feed" and "Messages" directly under your profile picture.
If you hover your mouse directly to the left of the "News Feed" link, a tiny gear will appear:
Click on that gear and a little "Edit Settings" box will pop up off it. Click "Edit Settings" and you'll be taken to the "Edit News Feed Settings" box like so:
There's the master list of all the people you've unfollowed and hidden posts from. You can simply click the "x" beside their name to remove them from the hidden list and then click "save." An alternate way to achieve the same end (but far more tedious if you need to do it for more than a few people) is to visit the person's Facebook profile page. There's a Follow/Unfollow button located in the lower right corner of each person's cover photo that you can toggle.
Have a pressing tech question? Shoot us an email at ask@howtogeek.com and we'll do our best to answer it.