Friendly for Facebook is a free lite alternative Facebook app for Android. It combines the functionality of both Facebook and Facebook Messenger. You can use Facebook messaging through this lightweight Facebook app without installing Facebook Messenger. So, it is a lite alternative to Facebook and Facebook Messenger. It comes with many additional features to save your mobile data, device battery, etc. It also lets you customize Facebook news feed and block images and videos from it to reduce mobile data usage. You can specify certain keywords and this free lite alternative Facebook app will then automatically hide the posts containing those keywords from your news feed. It also gives you the option to highlight specified keywords in Facebook posts. Another good feature of this free alternative to Facebook Android app is that it lets you add multiple Facebook accounts and quickly switch between them.
It also comes with efficient notification management. It lets you specify the notification checking frequency and quiet hours (no notifications during that time period). You can choose from a number of different themes to customize its user interface and make text look bigger in news feed section.
Facebook has already launched its lightweight Android version i.e. Facebook Lite and for Facebook Messenger i.e. Messenger lite. But the additional features offered by Friendly for Facebook makes it more useful than Facebook lite. It takes up more space as compared to Facebook Lite. On my device, it took up around 16 MB which is very low as compared to Facebook (around 308 MB). Despite being so lightweight and fast, it offers some useful features which are not even available in the official Facebook app. Apart from that, you can also use Facebook messaging in Friendly for Facebook without installing Facebook Messenger.
The only limitations of this free lite alternative Facebook app are that you can’t use it to make audio and videos call to your friends. You can send the text messages through this app just as in Facebook lite and mobile version of Facebook.
Features of this free lite alternative Facebook app for Android:
Friendly for Facebook comes with a very similar interface like Facebook i.e. you’ll see 4 different tabs for news feed, messages, notifications, and Facebook menu. You can swipe between these tabs to access Facebook news feed, messages, notifications, etc. It also lets you quickly sort Facebook stories by MOST RECENT or TOP STORIES and filter them by keywords. Tap on the settings button on top to quickly switch between the most recent and top stories of Facebook.
You can also block images and videos from showing.
If you have dived deep in the Facebook news feed then this app also gives you the option to quickly move to the top. It also lets you save Facebook photo stories, just open a Facebook photo and tap on the Download button. You can fully customize this app to get notifications only when you like, choose night mode and other themes that attract your eyes, protect it with a passcode for privacy and use multiple Facebook accounts through it.
I will quickly summarize its features so that you can get a real insight of this super fast and lightweight FB alternative:
- Notifications: Set a notification check frequency time from 1 minute to 1 day. By this option, you can choose the time interval after which this app will check for newer Facebook notifications. You can completely disable notifications or choose quiet hours at which it won’t disturb you with Facebook notifications. These options are quite useful in reducing background data usage and battery consumption.
- Facebook Stories filters: Block specific Facebook posts with certain keywords and images and videos from your Facebook stories. Blocking images and videos on Facebook news feed give you the ultimate freedom to reduce mobile data bills while using Facebook.
- Privacy: Protect it with a 4 digit passcode and set a time interval after which it automatically locks itself.
- Style & Appearance: Choose from different color themes and make text appear larger in news feed. Also, comes with night mode.
- Data Usage: Block images and videos in news feed.
- Use multiple Facebook accounts: Add multiple Facebook accounts and quickly switch between them to use them together.
How to filter Facebook news feed with this free lite alternative Facebook app:
As I mentioned, you can filter Facebook news feed through this app. You just have to specify certain keywords and it will then automatically block or hide Facebook posts containing that keyword. To enable its news feed filtering option, tap on the floating button with Friendly for Facebook logo and select Feed Filters option, as you can see in the screenshot below.
After that, select the “Hide Posts by Keyword” option from the drop-down menu that appears. There are also a couple of useful options to filter Facebook news feed like Hide ‘People You May Know’ option, which will hide annoying Facebook friends suggestions or you can even highlight certain words in Facebook posts by its Highlight Posts by Keyword option.
After you have selected the Hide Posts by Keyword option, you just have to specify a keyword and tap on the “+” button to add it to the post filtering lists. Suppose you don’t want to see the Facebook posts related to politics then you can add “politics” keyword to block all Facebook posts containing “politics” from showing up in your Facebook news feed.
If you want to use multiple Facebook accounts, then tap on its button and then select Switch Account option.
After that, you can add your another Facebook account by logging with your Facebook credentials. The best part of that you can quickly switch between multiple accounts by just a single tap and you are not required to log in again and again.
Verdict:
In this article, I introduced you to a free lite alternative Facebook app called Friendly for Facebook. I will definitely recommend you to check out Friendly for Facebook as it comes with pretty useful features and is lightweight as well. It can really end your search if you are looking for a lightweight alternative to Facebook and Facebook Messenger for Android.
