How to Bulk Delete or Archive Old Facebook Posts
The feature for both app and web makes it easier to manage your past
Wachirawit Iemlerkchai / Alamy Stock Photo
En español | Whether you’ve decided to quit Facebook once and for all or simply want to take down old posts you regret publishing, the world’s largest social media site hasn’t exactly made it easy to properly remove content — until now.
Facebook was under fire for making its process of taking down a photo, comment or like rather convoluted. The same applied to those who wanted to delete their account altogether and might unknowingly leave a digital footprint, such as a message sent to someone still active on the platform.
Thankfully, a Facebook feature called Manage Activity simplifies the deletion of posted content, both in bulk and individually, all in one place.
Introduced in 2020 and updated since then, Manage Activity includes the option to privately archive your posts or keep posts for your eyes only and not completely remove them from Facebook if you’ve had second thoughts about the privacy of your posts on social media. So you can save a post you wrote in 2018 that you still find funny — such as a haircut gone wrong and your friends’ hilarious reactions to it — but that you don’t want a potential employer to see.
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Nearly 20 years after its founding in 2004, Facebook is the most popular social media platform worldwide by far with nearly 3 billion users, according to Facebook’s third-quarter earnings report. About 261 million are in the United States, according to NapoleonCat, a social media marketing company based in Warsaw, Poland. Facebook’s parent company, called Meta, also owns Instagram and WhatsApp.
More than 70 percent of U.S. adults use Facebook. No other major platform comes anywhere close to this volume, except YouTube. About half of U.S. adults 65 and older are on Facebook at least occasionally; that percentage rises to almost three-quarters for adults 50 to 65, according to a Pew Research Center poll in early 2021.
As of November, adults 55 and older made up more than 20 percent of Facebook users, according to NapoleonCat, and 14 percent were 45 to 54.
So if you have a Facebook account — and chances are you do — read on to learn how to use Manage Activity and delete or save posts that you no longer want to share.
How to bulk delete via the app
When Manage Activity launched a few years ago, Facebook limited the rollout to users of its smartphone app but has since made this feature available for web users, too.
Let’s start with the app. If you’re on a smartphone, such as an iPhone or Android, consider these step-by-step instructions. If you use the Facebook app on an Apple iPad or Android tablet, see the web instructions below.
1. Open the Facebook app.
2. Depending on your type of phone, you’ll either see three dots ⋯ in the corner of the screen or an arrow pointing down near your profile photo. Tap it. If you don’t see either, tap your Profile icon, then the three dots ⋯.
3. Select the option that says Activity Log.
4. Tap Manage Your Posts and you’ll see all your posts listed from newest to oldest. You can view, change your audience (private or public) or delete.
But this article is about how to do it in bulk, grouping several posts together. Tap the Filters tab to view and manage all your posts and filter them to help you sort and find what you’re looking for.
This way you can find posts with a certain date range, specific people or items, such as photos or videos.
5. Tapping the Filters tab will prompt a pop-up underneath it where you can tap Categories, Date, Audience or People.
If you tap Manage Your Posts, a new menu will appear with options for All posts; Text updates, check-ins, notes and more; Photos and videos; and Posts from other apps.
If you tap Photos and Videos, you’ll see the posts by date with the newest on top, and you can select posts one by one by ticking the little box or selecting All.
6. Once you make a selection, choose to Archive or Trash or, under the three dots to the right, it will include those two options and Change Audience.
• Archive. This option is for Facebook content you no longer want others to see but you want to keep for yourself.
• Trash. Use this feature to move unwanted posts to delete. The trash will stay there for 30 days before being deleted unless you choose to manually delete or restore the posts before then.
• Change audience. This allows you to manage who sees the posts on your profile.
You can review your decisions to save or delete your posts by tapping Archive or Trash tabs at the top of the screen. Tap one of the posts and you’ll have a couple of additional options, such as changing from Archive to Trash or vice versa. You can close out of these options if you change your mind. This will take you back to the list of photos or videos.
How to bulk delete on a web browser
If you prefer to use Facebook on the web, perhaps because you like a larger screen on which to see content and a full-size keyboard to type out your posts, the following is how to delete a bunch of old posts.
Be aware that you’re limited to 50 posts at a time. If you want to do more than this, consider using the app. If you use the Facebook app on an iPad or Android tablet, skip to step number 3, below.
1. On your PC or Mac, go to Facebook.com and sign in if you’re not automatically logged in.
2. Click on your Profile photo in the top right-hand corner and look in the middle of the screen.
3. Right below the main posting window, where it asks you “What’s on your mind?” you’ll see the word Posts in bold and tab under that called ⚙︎ Manage posts beside a little Settings gear icon. Click where it says Manage posts.
4. You’ll see thumbnails and some text for the past 50 posts you made on your timeline. Click Filters near the top and you’ll see options to filter in four ways: by year; who posted it, you or others; privacy setting, public, friends, only me; and tagged posts.
Select one or more options relevant to you, such as all posts you made in 2022 or photos you were tagged in.
Now you can group Archive, in case you change your mind later on, or group Delete if you want them gone for good.
This story, originally published June 22, 2020, has been updated throughout with new information.
Marc Saltzman is a contributing writer who covers personal technology. His work also appears in USA Today and other national publications. He hosts the podcast series Tech It Out and is the author of several books, including Apple Watch for Dummies.