Having a well-organized friends list on Facebook can make your experience on the platform much more enjoyable. With custom friend lists, you can easily filter your news feed, control privacy settings, and target updates to specific groups of people.
As a social media consultant with over 10 years of experience, I’m going to walk you through exactly how to create, organize, and manage custom friend lists. Whether you want to separate work contacts from personal friends or hide updates from certain people, this guide has you covered.
Table of Contents
Why Organize Your Friends List
Here are some of the key reasons you may want to organize your friends using custom lists:
- Filter Your News Feed – See posts only from close friends or family members by creating a separate news feed for that list. This lets you avoid getting overwhelmed.
- Adjust Privacy Settings – Choose exactly which friend lists can view your posts, photos, personal information, and more.
- Target Status Updates – When writing a post, select a particular friend list to share it with. For example, share family photos just with relatives.
- Stay Organized – Keep better track of your connections by grouping friends, rather than having one long, cluttered list.
How to Create a Facebook Friend List
Creating new friend lists is simple:
- Click on Friends in the left sidebar of your Facebook home page.
- Select Create List near the top.
- Give your new list a name (e.g. Close Friends, Family, Work Colleagues).
- Type in the names of friends to add to this list. A dropdown will appear with suggestions as you type.
- Click Create when you’ve finished adding friends.
You can create as many lists as you want to categorize your friends. For example, make separate lists for high school friends, college friends, coworkers, etc.
How to Add and Remove Friends From Lists
After making a list, you can add more friends anytime:
- Go back to your main friend lists page and select the list.
- Click Edit List and start typing a friend’s name. Select them from the dropdown menu.
- Click Save Changes when you’ve finished editing the list.
To remove a friend, go through the same process but click the X icon next to their name instead of selecting them.
How to Use Friend Lists
Once you’ve organized friends into lists, here are some ways you can put them to use:
- Click on a list to view a news feed showing only those friends’ posts.
- When writing a status update, choose a specific list under Custom to share it with.
- Adjust privacy settings for posting, tagging, apps, and info to friends or lists.
- Sort friends with Close Friends first, then Acquaintances in your main friends list.
Pro Tip: Create a “Restricted” list to limit what those friends see from you. Facebook automatically limits their visibility.
Additional Tips for Managing Friends Lists
- Review your lists periodically and remove inactive friends or those you no longer interact with.
- When accepting/adding new friends, immediately add them to the appropriate list.
- Use friend lists to filter news feeds and avoid overwhelming political posts.
- Don’t notify friends when adding or removing them from lists. These are for your purposes only.
- Name lists based on common interests or affiliations among friends in that group.
Conclusion
Organizing your Facebook friends with custom lists gives you more control over privacy, targeting status updates, filtering feeds, and keeping better track of connections.
I hope this comprehensive guide on how to create, edit, and manage friend lists has helped explain this useful but overlooked Facebook feature. Let me know in the comments if you have any other questions!
