Went through the same process about 3 or 4 months ago. I was uninstalling from an android phone (so not exactly the same experience) but I was pleasantly surprised by how usable the mobile web app was. Also, how much happier I became when I wasn't killing time looking at inane "content".

If you're at all curious, try uninstalling Facebook from your phone and doing your best not to visit it on your computer for a a few days, maybe a week. It started out (embarassingly, still is) harder than I thought it would be, even though I don't maintain much of a profile on there – it's made me realize exactly how addicting that behavior can be. I do keep the messenger app on my phone so that I can stay in touch with my friends, but in my mind Facebook vs. Messenger are two totally separate products and experiences.

When you do this Facebook starts emailing you more trying to get you to come back: "See what you've missed while you were away!"

It's easy enough to disable all these emails in FB's notification preferences.

> It's easy enough to disable all these emails in FB's notification preferences.

Actually no, I don't think that's even possible. In the notification preferences, it appears you don't get a list of all notifications that you can disable, you only get a list of notifications you've already disabled, so they don't let you be proactive about disabling things.

I just tried clicking the "unsubscribe" link from one of Facebook's "So and so has updated their status. Please, come back, our algorithm misses you!" emails, and that added "Recent friend activity on Facebook" to my list of disabled notifications. Let's hope I still get emails for event invites and tagging notifications. They change stuff all the time, and I remember the last time I looked into this I was afraid I was disabling more than I wanted to, so I went with email filters instead.

I somehow managed to disable all of them before that change happened. I receive no Facebook notifications anymore, and happily look at Facebook ~once every 3 months.

This actually has the effect of encouraging me to stay away

This. Also, the emails taper off after you ignore a few.

BTW, the same author wrote that on Android it saves 20% of battery life: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/01/uninstalli...

News Feed Eradicator: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...

So you can use messenger without getting sucked into the feed. It's fantastic.

https://www.messenger.com also gives a messenger-app like experience on web, with no non-messenger notifications :D.

When the Messaging app first came out, I installed it. But I also hated how intrusive the app is. I uninstalled it and switched to just using the web interface.

Unfortunately, typing messages in the web interface on Android is absurdly awful. There is a bug such that the last message you sent remains in the text field invisibly and only shows up when you continue typing. So every time I sent a new message, I had to first hold backspace for ~10 seconds to delete the previous message and clean up the textarea. I got so frustrated doing this I switched back to the Messaging app a week ago.

It's life changing being notification-free (only email + text). I used to have my phone loaded to the brim with apps, now I use maybe 3 or 4 apps regularly tops. Hell, I'm even debating going back to a super barebones flip phone.

Comments like this is when I suddenly feel old. :)

I remember a life before the web, let alone smart phones and social networks. For me, buying my first Android phone (HTC G1 - the one with a slide out keyboard) is what changed my life. eg being able to solve an drunken pub debate in real time, or check train times, etc. It was really liberating....at the time.

It's funny because the prospect of being away from home with a flat battery is terrifying to many - and if I'm honest, not too appealing to myself either. Yet I've literally spent half my life without a mobile phone (smart or otherwise) and managed just fine.

It's funny how dependant we can become on technology.

I think you will love https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/get/id960699421?mt=8

Android version or equivalent?

in development right now, sorry :(

OK, thanks ;-)

I was in that debate too, at the end I chose to go with a two year windows phone...similar results :) , but still i can check the web if i need to.

I didn't have a choice about uninstalling the app on my old android phone. It was a built in app and all I could do was uninstall updates.

I never installed the update that included the referenced version of messenger.

On my new phone, I have never installed the app. I use use the website and it does 90% of what I want to do without the issue of running extra processes in the background on my phone.

I'm waiting for the day that Facebook depricates and/or discontinues the mobile site to force people onto the app.

> I'm waiting for the day that Facebook depricates and/or discontinues the mobile site to force people onto the app.

Messaging doesn't fully work in an Android browser. You might get a real-time notification badge, but my experience is 50/50. There is also an issue that if you do a manual refresh, you still might not get the new message notification. I imagine that there isn't a rush to fix these issues either.

I use Chrome on my Android phone. I haven't experienced any problems with messaging.

I don't want audible notifications. I'll get my messages the next time I check Facebook.

This might not be ideal for everyone but it works for me.

This is my experience almost exactly (iOS user). Since then I've started uninstalling all of my apps that have a reasonable mobile web alternative. I'd held on to them from the days when the mobile web wasn't so great.

It is interesting that many people don't know that most of their apps have perfectly good mobile web apps too. With the advent in web technologies and developers' focus on best practices the web apps have become very responsive. Personally I got tired of downloading and installing and signing up for apps only to find I didn't use them very frequently. Then I saw their web apps and they worked great. Now I don't have 100 apps on my phone. Just one that takes care of going to all those web apps quickly and easily. Full Disclosure: I built that one app, get@ app.

I've been doing exactly this too over the last few months. Safari iOS is so fast now on the iPhone 6s that I find the mobile sites faster than the apps in most cases.

Signing. I uninstalled the FB app 6 months ago and even log out from the web app. Best decision ever.

Basically, I use only messenger.

And if you really want notifications, they can still be enabled via the Google Chrome app when you visit the Facebook website.

Not an iPhone user here - do you mean that the Chrome app on iOS has Web Push notification support?

It doesn't look like it does yet.

http://caniuse.com/#search=Notifications

Shame. I wonder if Google could shim it into Chrome iOS?

They should be able to. Embedded Safari allows you to define JavaScript APIs to interface with your app, and the app can register for push notifications.

I just tried that, apparently it doesn't work for messages, which is the only thing I need from Facebook (for the two people who message me there). I guess I'll just keep relying on the twenty-minute-late email notification for messaging.

Personally, I uninstalled the Facebook app but kept the Messenger app (with disabled chat bubble).

Works good enough for me. I browser Facebook on the browser when needed (never) and use Messenger for chat alerts.

On desktop, I use http://messengerfordesktop.com/ to avoid going on the Facebook website.

I also use custom CSS on the Facebook website to break some of it's linearity. This make it less likely that I will browse mindlessly. Facebook UI is designed as a precise drug and simply changing it a little bit will disrupt that. (I use a red UI, a noisy background, bigger fonts, etc.)

I use pidgin, with the newer facebook plugin - it doesn't look as sexy, but it does almost all I need (except for uploading files), and I have a bunch of other accounts connected. When I need to upload stuff, I just go to https://messenger.com

Use http://messenger.com for Facebook messages. In settings, you can turn on notifications.

But if you switch to the web app from the native app, now Facebook is tracking all your web usage.

> But if you switch to the web app from the native app, now Facebook is tracking all your web usage.

I use this app, which is supposed to run the Facebook mobile site in a separate sandbox from my other browsing.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.danvelazco...

This is the same app I use. No complaints so far.

You can dedicate one browser (say firefox mobile) for FB only and use chrome or Safari for regular web viewing.

So, instead of one app that sandboxes my FB usage, I would be using a different app (a separate browser) to do basically the same. It might work if Firefox is less of a battery hog then FB app.

There's a good alternative to this on Android, namely apps like Tinfoil for Facebook, which are simply convenience webkit wrappers around the Facebook WebView

If you use Firefox Mobile, you can add uBlock Origin to the browser so that it mimics what the desktop browser can do. And remember that you can enable Disconnect rules in uBlock Origin when you're in Advanced mode!

I'm sorry I don't understand how a web app can track ALL your web usage? Wouldn't that apply to using facebook.com on the desktop browser too then?

It does.

https://euobserver.com/digital/131029

That's really interesting. The way I understand tracking cookies is that websites the user visits needs to have some snippet from Facebook on them for that snippet to be able to read the cookie and update it right? And since most sites have the Share on facebook button that's potentially how the tracking cookie is picked up by Facebook.

Yup, that's exactly the behaviour.

Also a reason I deleted cookies, history and saved credentials and just use incognito for FB nowadays. It also stops the habitual browsing that gets you hooked.

I only use Facebook from the desktop, and run Facebook.com in a dedicated app via Nativefier. The beauty of that is that this keeps all cookies and tracking completely separate from my main Safari searches. https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier

Maybe someone could explain - how can mobile web be faster than (semi?) native app?

Because your phone's web browser can include an ad blocker, while the one in the native app has to make all those extra requests?

This is not applicable to majority of mobile web users outside of US (Android devices for example) or non-Safari users (Chrome on iOS).

Android users can get adblockers by sideloading, and Chrome users on iOS are a tiny minority.

The reason why the mobile web version is less sucky on your battery life is because it doesn't get the chance to break out of the browser to monitor your position, play silent audio so that it can stay "active" and push notifications at you, and generally push to the front of the queue.

i did the same thing and was also pleased with the results until the recent change that removed the submit button from the text entry field on comments - now there isnt a way to reply to conversations on facebook.