It is possible to hide a Facebook friend from your news feed without actually unfriending them. Today we look at a couple of ways of achieving this, and discuss additional concerns encountered by our readers.

The procedure for hiding a friend from your news feed changed in 2013. Below is the most recent way to achieve this, valid as of July 2014.

Follow/Unfollow

In early 2013, Facebook offered the ability for users to “subscribe” to public posts by any users who enabled the subscribe feature. It was generally believed that this feature was Facebook’s answer to Twitter’s follow/unfollow feature, which – unlike Facebook – allows users to have a non-mutual connection. This belief appeared to be confirmed when Facebook recently changed the “subscribe” feature to be “follow” and “unfollow.”

By default, you automatically follow any friends you add on Facebook, or anyone to whom you send a friend request – even if they don’t accept your request. You can, however unfollow any of your friends while remaining connected to them. This allows you to retain your friendship without seeing any of their posts.

The follow/unfollow feature is now the way to hide a Facebook friend without unfriending them, and it can be performed in several places.

Method 1

In your news feed, click the drop-down menu by one of your friend’s news stories. You can then select “unfollow.”

You can unfollow your friends by selecting the drop-down menu on your news feed.

Method 2

Visit your friend’s profile and simply uncheck the button which reads “following.” You can also get a similar pop-up when you mouse over your friend’s name from anywhere within Facebook.

Go to your friend’s profile and uncheck the button if it reads “following.”. Unchecking the “follow” button will change this to read “follow” which means you are no longer seeing this person in your news feed.

Other Concerns

• Re-following: Some commenters have asked if re-following a friend will notify them. We tested this out, and it does not appear to be the case. Your friend will not be informed if you unfollow or re-follow them.
• The friend you unfollowed will still see your posts in their news feed. They will not be informed that you no longer see their posts.
• Your friend can still tag you or post on your wall.

Bottom Line

The way to hide a Facebook friend from your newsfeed without unfriending them is to use the “unfollow” feature which was introduced in early 2013.