As convenient and practically universal as Facebook has become, there are still opportunities for the popular social media platform to throw its users for a loop. Occasionally, simply getting back to the Facebook login home page can be about as convenient as an afternoon at the DMV office. We’re here to straighten that out, no matter your reason for needing to get back to it.
So immersed are we in the digital era that smartphones and Facebook have become ubiquitous for almost everyone in the US. The smartphone keeps a person connected to every aspect of their lives, from the interpersonal to news media, while Facebook ensures that they can have a free online presence that’s persistent, always updated, and representative of who they are as a person. Interests are displayed front and center. All voices are equal and anybody can “go viral” if their words catch on with an information-hungry audience.
Personal technology has done more to shape the way that human beings connect and communicate more than any other innovation in the past half-century. The internet was unprecedented, but even that has only helped to carry us to the point that we’ve reached now. The convenient speed and availability of the internet have evolved into a technological telepathy, wherein we smartphone bearers can practically anticipate each other’s thoughts depending on how connected we are with specific trends, apps, and feeds.
It’s no wonder that logging out of Facebook and getting back to the home login page is made to be such a pain in the butt. After all, we’re meant to stay on the feed, to stay connected, to keep scrolling as updates roll in from all of our various contacts. It’s endless, and it’s a remarkably easy way to lose a few hours in your day.
It doesn’t really matter why you want to get back to that login screen; only that you do, and that depending on what platform you’re accessing Facebook from, it can be somewhat difficult. While the overall Facebook interface is fairly minimalistic, the variety of information displayed in the feed and the relative difficulty of navigating the various menus can turn that simple display into a cluttered mess quite quickly.
There are a few things that can complicate it further: operating system, screen size, desktop, laptop, smartphone, and the list could go on and on. Facebook’s universal application to practically every piece of modern computing hardware means that the social media platform is everywhere. Considering how many people use Facebook, and the wide number of devices that must constantly (and efficiently) play host to it, it’s a small miracle that it manages to function so fluently, wherever it is.
Thankfully, that process is similar enough between devices that we can walk you through a solution to this problem fairly succinctly. We’ll look at the browser-based version of Facebook first, as you might see it on a desktop or laptop computer. Since web browsers on mobile device’s display an optimized version of Facebook, we’ll tackle that next.
The Facebook Login Screen
As far as minimalist login pages go, Facebook is fairly close to taking the cake. You’re only given a barebones splash page that clearly displays the Facebook logo and a few other bits of information. Accompanying that is a request for your username or email address and password. It seems simple (and really, it is) but once you’ve entered that information, Facebook likes to constantly zip you along to your main social media feed every time you visit http://www.facebook.com. You’re not given the option to hit that login screen beforehand unless you go through the logout process before leaving Facebook.
That’s the trick, and the remainder of this guide will show you how to do it, in case you’ve gotten yourself lost in Facebook’s myriad of settings.
Facebook Feed
Here’s what throws off quite a few users; as soon as you enter your login information on the Facebook home page, your web browser usually tucks away a cookie and a record of that information, which means that you won’t have to enter it each time you visit Facebook. This is intended to be a convenience, and the honest truth is that it is a convenience, most of the time. It ceases being a convenience when you don’t want to remain logged into Facebook through a particular web browser, on a particular computer, or during a specific period of time. If you want your time spent logged into Facebook to be more intermittent than constant, this procedure doesn’t help you one little bit.
Thankfully, it’s a fairly easy one to solve. There are a couple of ways you can go about doing it, too
- Manually logging out can be done at any time from the menu at the top of your personal feed. To the right of your search bar, near the link that will lead to your personal profile, is a drop-down options menu. Click this and you’ll be given a list of everything from account settings to privacy options. At the very bottom of the list, you’ll see “Log Out.” Give it a click, and you’re good to go! Your next visit to the Facebook home page will take you right to the login screen, instead of your personal feed.
- Deleting your browser’s cookies will actually deliver the same result, preventing automatic logins on frequently visited web pages. If you’ve instructed your browser to remember your email address and password, you may also have to instruct it to forget this information. On the plus side, this will accomplish what you’d like without requiring you to dig through Facebook’s options (and will accomplish it on other sites as well, if that’s what you’re after.)
Facebook Settings
If security is your concern, there are actually several login options that you can implement and review withing the Facebook settings menu. Using the above instructions, find your way to the Settings menu from your Facebook feed; it’s located right above the “Log Out” option.
From here, look to the left spine where your Settings categories are organized. Select “Security” and then review the options listed therein. Login Alerts and Login Approvals can be configured to add an extra layer of security to your Facebook profile, and will require an extra step on your part each time that you want to log in. The “Where You’ve Logged In” option will let you view all of the locations from which your profile has been accessed. This can be especially handy if you’re worried that someone has accessed your account without your knowledge.
Desktop vs. Mobile
Conveniently, the process described above for logging out of the desktop Facebook application works just as well on mobile, and quite nearly the same way. As we’ve covered before, the default for mobile web browsers is to send you to the optimized version of the Facebook website, which features a trimmed-down interface and a more visible (in some ways) Settings menu. It’s located in the same exact place as you’ll find it on the desktop version–look to the top-right of your main Facebook feed for a drop down menu, at the bottom of which is the option to “Log Out.”
The result is the same! When you next visit the Facebook web page you won’t be automatically taken to your feed; instead, you’ll be presented with the login home page.
Of course, if you’ve been accessing the desktop version of Facebook on your mobile device, then the first portion of our guide will be more apt to your experience.
It’s important to understand that a pinnacle of the world’s social media experience such as Facebook shapes itself to best serve the greatest number of customers. When you think about the millions of people that use Facebook on a regular basis, it’s also important to realize that all of these people are coming together via the same interface, no matter where they’re accessing it from. Given this fact, it’s understandable that the developers and designers would create the most convenient experience that they could while balancing it with an impressive number of optional features.
As it stands, one of those “features” is actually the ability to log out and not automatically be presented with your feed each time that you visit. Thankfully, it’s an easy obstacle to overcome, and with the few simple steps described above, you’ll be able to streamline your experience to your own preference, each time you visit that trademark login page.
If we’ve missed anything, or if you have any further questions about navigating Facebook’s many options, don’t hesitate to speak up in the comments below! Facebook is an ever-changing platform, and though we try to keep up with the new features in each major iteration of the social media hub, there’s always the chance that something might have slipped through our fingers. That said, the login home page of Facebook has remained relatively unchanged over the years, and considering how reliable and stable it currently is, I don’t expect we’ll see any major changes in the near future.