Lists on Facebook.

Lists help you organise your friends or things you are interested in the way you want to.
After you have the lists created, you can use them to control what you see in your new feed.
You can also control the visibility of your posts easily using the lists.

You can find the list from the menu at the left on the home page.
Just click on "Friends" or "More" and you will see all the list you have.

At the beginning, you will have some default lists in your account.
They are: Close Friends, Acquaintances, Family,etc.
In addition to these, there are few Smart lists.

Smart Lists:

These are the default lists that Facebook creates and maintains automatically depending on your details.

They are created using your details like your location, school/university, workplace, etc.
All your friends that have details common with you are added to these lists automatically.

These lists are smart as the name says.They update themselves automatically.

So, if any of your friend changes his location, workplace or school, the list will get updated automatically.

Creating your own list:

You can create a list of your own and add desired friends to it.

Go to Home > Friends and you will have an option to create a new list at the top right.

You will be asked to enter the name of the list and names of the friends you want to be in that list.

Once the list is created, you can edit it whenever you want.

How to add friends to lists?

Go to your friends profile/timeline, hover upon the friends tab and you will get an option box having several options including "Add to lists:" and names of the lists you have on your profile.

By clicking on the name of the list, that friend will be added to the list.
You can add a friend to multiple lists if you wish.

You need not necessarily go to your friends profile to add him to a list.

There are few more ways to do it.

When you see any update from your friend on your home page, or the Ticker, you can just hover upon his name or pic to get brief details about him.

There you will see the Friends tab too.Click/hover on that tab and you will see the options there.

You can do the same when you send a friend request to someone.

When you send a request, the "Add Friend" tab changes to "Friend Request Sent".

Click on that tab and you will be able to see the same menu there.


How to remove a friend from a list?

Its as simple as you add a friend to a list.

Follow the steps you did for adding your friend to a list and uncheck the name of the list in which you don't want him to be in.

To add/remove several friends to a list at a time, scroll down and look for the Manage list.

Manage your lists:

Smart Lists/Default lists: They can be edited easily and you can change its settings or add/remove friends from the list.
Go to the list you want to edit and click on the "Manage list" to get the options to edit.

Close Friends

Smart list(location)



These two snaps show you the manage list menu for two different default lists that are created automatically.

First one is a smart list based on your location and the second is the Close Friends list.

They have has several options under the "Manage List" as you can see. 

• Rename as the name suggests, can be used to change the name of the list.
• Edit List is to quickly add/remove friends from the list.
• Choose Update Types allows you to select what updates you would like to see from the people in that list. You can select/deselect the types of updates(eg: status updates, photos, comments and likes, etc.) you want.

The "Edit Radius" option is exclusive for the smart list based on your location. It helps you to set the radius around the location and all the friends within that radius are added to the list automatically.

There is a "Notifications" tab in the close friends list as you can see in the snapshot.
This can be used to receive/stop-receiving a notification when a friend in that list posts something.

There are some more exclusive options for other lists which allow you to manage your list.
The list based on your school has a "Pick Range" option which can help you to set the age range of the friends you want to appear in that list.

Lists created by you: They can be managed in the same was as the smart lists.

Go to the list and click on the "Manage List" tab to get the options.

• Rename List to change the name of the list.
• Edit List to add/remove friends.
• Choose Update Types... to choose what updates you want to see from those friends.
• Delete List is an option which you will find only for the lists you have created. You can delete the list using this option.
  Please note that deleting the list will only delete the list from your profile not the friends in that list. Those friends will still remain as your friends on Facebook.

How to delete a list?

As you can see right above, there is an option for deleting the list you have created.
Using that option you can delete the list.
But it is not possible to delete a smart list or any default list(close friends, acquaintances, etc.).
You can archive a smart list but not delete it.
There is an archive option in the manage list menu for a smart list to do that.
Archiving the list will not delete it but only archive it.


Restricted list:

This is a list which is present in your profile by default.
Initially it will not have any friend. Also it is not like a smart list which works automatically at times.
This list is to help you restrict some people from seeing some content on your profile.
Your friends in this list will not be able to see your posts, pics, some part of the info, etc. if you add them to the restricted list.
This is as good as blocking or unfriending someone. The advantage is that the person will be your friend on Facebook but wont be able to see everything.

What the friends in this list will be able to see is your posts which are public or the posts which they are tagged in.

One more important feature is that those friends in the restricted list will never know that they are in your restricted list and you dont have to change too many settings for that.