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Facebook has redesigned its settings menu again to make sure you never know what’s going on

The new settings UI now only has six categories to navigate.

Screenshots of the facebook app showing the redesigned and prior settings layout
Image: KnowTechie

Hey Facebook users, you’re about to get confused again when you next open up your app. That’s because the settings pages have been redesigned, supposedly to “reduce the number of categories” and “more closely match people’s mental models.”

The new settings UI now only has six categories to navigate: Account, Preferences, Audience and Visibility, Permissions, Your Information, and Community Standards and Legal Policies. The thing is… while having the settings pages simplified sounds like a good idea, really all Facebook has done has thrown the labyrinthine settings into new boxes.

What’s more, they removed the labels that were supplying important context so you could find the setting you wanted. That includes all of the privacy settings that Facebook used to have in its own section. That section is gone, with all of its settings now moved into other categories.

I’m not so sure that makes things easier for users to control their privacy settings, Mr. Zuckerberg. Sounds a lot like you’ve commissioned research to say what you wanted so you can make your privacy settings *ahem* more private.

The only decent change here is that there is now a shortcut to your Privacy Checkup at the top of the app’s settings. In theory, that means you won’t have to dig around in the settings to find the privacy settings – the shortcut should walk you through things.

In practice, I can only imagine that Facebook will only let you use the privacy settings it wants you to use, while lulling you into a false sense of security (again).

Anyway, the new redesign for the settings pages is rolling out to Android, iOS, mobile web, and Facebook Lite starting today.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere. His hobbies include photography, animation, and hoarding Reddit gold.

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