How to Limit data usage on facebook

How to Limit data usage on facebook

Data bundle expenses are becoming a pain in the rear end, or if you can afford them, you want to make sure they last for as long as they can. So here’s a few tricks to handle your data bundle more efficiently on your favourite social media and streaming sites.

On facebook

Adjusting your app settings to reduce Facebook data usage

Now, this is the first step that you should undertake if you're worried that Facebook is using too much data. Coincidentally, this is also the easiest thing you can do. If you share a lot of photos and videos on Facebook, this might be the root cause of your data woes. As might be the (super annoying) video auto-playing feature. To curb this unnecessary data usage, you'll need to do the following:

1. Open the Facebook app and tap on “More” (it is represented by 3 parallel lines at the bottom right-hand corner.)
2. Scroll down right to the end and tap on “Settings & Privacy”. A drop down window will appear. Choose the first one named “Settings”.
3. Scroll down and tap on “Media and Contacts”.
4. Select the corresponding choice on when and how auto-videos are played. You can choose between “On Wi-Fi connections only” or “Never auto-play videos”. Either one is fine since both choices will not use your mobile data.

We tend to share photos and videos on the go from the iPhone and it is easy to go beyond our mobile data limit if you are uploading them all in HD quality.

• Turn off the HD upload feature by toggle the buttons “Upload HD” in both the video and photo sections off.

Watch Videos in Low Resolution

Watching facebook videos is one of the things that most people generally do either to reap knowledge, entertainment, or to simply kill time. And while it’s free for the most part, it may often eat a lot of your data bandwidth, which could be an issue, especially if you have a limited cellular data plan. To reduce facebook data usage on videos, here’s what you can do.

1. When playing a video,pause it and tap the gear icon which is located at the down right corner of the video.
2. Select a lower resolution that produces decent visual quality.

Remember, the higher the quality, the more bandwidth facebook consumes. You'd want to ensure you choose a low resolution that doesn't unreasonably dampen the video quality.

I stream videos at 360p (480p sometimes) when playing videos on cellular data. When I'm only interested in the audio, I stream at 144p (240p) resolution.

Use Facebook Lite

Now, if you really want to save data and also live in some part of the world where your data connection is frustratingly slow, Facebook Lite is the solution for you. Facebook Lite is a slimmed-down version of the Facebook app designed to give people a better and faster experience on slow mobile networks.