Facebook Home Basics

Facebook Home is software for your phone designed to put your friends above everything else. You can download Facebook Home for free or purchase it pre-installed on a phone. Facebook Home works together with the Facebook for Android and Facebook Messenger apps to enable its main features:

• Cover feed: Glance at your phone for photos and posts from your Facebook News Feed.
• Chat heads: Send and receive texts and Facebook messages in one place. Open, close and drag chat heads around your screen to keep chatting while you’re using other apps.
• Notifications: See news as it happens with bigger, bolder notifications on your home screen.
• App launcher: Get right to your favorite apps and post to Facebook from the same place.

There are two ways you can get the Facebook Home experience:

Download the app: Upgrade to Facebook Home on your own by downloading the apps Facebook, Facebook Home, and Facebook Messenger from Google's Play Store. Facebook Home for Android will be available for download on the HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung GALAXY S III and Samsung GALAXY Note II starting on April 12th for people who live in the US.

The HTC First: The HTC First gives you the best Home experience possible. There’s no setup required—just turn it on, log into Facebook, and see your friends. Learn more about how to to get one.

1. Tap Log into Facebook
2. Sign into Facebook with your normal Facebook login, or tap the bottom link Sign Up for Facebook

If you're having trouble signing in, find informtion and troubleshooting tips.

Tip: Sign into Facebook Messenger to get message notifications on your cover feed.

From your computer, you can go to your Mobile Settings to add, remove or edit phone numbers.

If you already have a mobile number on the account:

• Click Add another mobile phone number to activate another number
• Click Remove to remove any of the numbers that are already listed on your account

We also recommend that you add an email address to your account so you always have a backup.

You can sync your Facebook contacts to your phone if you have Messenger:

1. Open your Messenger app
2. Tap your phone's menu button
3. Tap Settings > Contacts > Sync Contacts

You can make sure you're always using the best version of Facebook by allowing automatic updates:

1. Open the Google Play Store app and tap your phone’s menu button
2. Check the box next to Auto-update apps

You can uncheck this same box later if you ever want to turn off automatic updating.

1. Tap your phone’s main Settings app > Wi-Fi
2. Tap the network you'd like to connect to

If you're having trouble connectting to Wi-Fi, try disconnecting and reconnecting to your Wi-Fi network or try connecting to a different Wi-Fi network.

Photos and posts that would normally show in your News Feed will show on your cover feed on Facebook Home. You can swipe back and forth through them to view them at your own pace.

Double tap a photo or status you see to like it. Once you’ve liked it, you’ll see a thumbs-up appear. If there is a status with a photo in the background, you'll only be able to like the status from cover feed.

Photos and posts that you normally could see in your News Feed may show on your cover feed. You can swipe back and forth through them to view them at your own pace.

Double tap a photo or status you see in your cover feed to like it. Once you’ve liked it, you’ll see a thumbs-up appear.

Press and hold your finger on your profile picture at the bottom of your cover feed in the Facebook Home app. This will reveal three icons.

App launcher: Drag your profile picture to the top squares icon and release your finger.

Messenger: Drag your profile picture to the left and release your finger.

Unlock to go to last app you used: Drag your profile picture to right arrow icon and release your finger to go to the last app you used.

Double tap the notification. This will take you to view the story or message.

Swipe a single notification off to the right side of the screen to close it. Swipe your notifications down to hide all notifications at once.

To close multiple notifications on your cover feed, press and hold one notification until they group together, then swipe the group off to the side of the screen. You will still receive new notifications on your cover feed.

1. Drag your profile picture to the left Messenger icon to open Facebook Messenger
2. Tap + to start a new message
3. You can type a friend's name to start a message or text with a friend or contact, or type anyone's phone number to start a text message

Chat heads let you quickly read and reply to messages while you're using other apps. Just tap your friend's picture to reply. You can use your finger to move chat heads around your screen and drag them to the bottom of the screen to close them when you're done chatting.

If you're using Facebook Home and have the Messenger app running, you'll also get your text message notifications through chat heads.

If you don't want to see chat heads when a new message arrives:

1. Tap your phone's menu button
2. Tap Home Settings > Messenger Settings > Notifications
3. Uncheck Chat Heads

Open your app launcher , and tap the pencil in the top-left . You can add a friend, location or photo from here and adjust the audience selector from here before you tap Post.

1. From cover feed, press and drag your profile picture to open the app launcher
2. Tap the camera at the top and then again at the bottom-left
3. Tap the camera to take a photo or the video camera to take a video
4. When you’re done, tap and then tap each photo you'd like to post >
5. Tap Post in the top-right

1. Press and hold your finger on your profile picture at the bottom of your cover feed. Drag your profile picture up to the app launcher
2. Swipe right to see the full list of apps on your phone
3. Hold and press an app and slide it to the right edge of the screen to drop it back on your app launcher
4. Drop the app wherever you'd like it for quick access