Sunday, May 29, 2011

Disable Facebook Chat Saving Directly in the Messages (NOT)

Facebook have managed to upset users with their latest upgrade to the chat feature.

PLEASE NOTE:  If you are looking for information on how to Disable Facebook Chat so that your pesky friends don’t bug you when you are on facebook, Click here.

A lot of people are trying to find out how to disable the new Facebook “feature” that saves your full chat directly into the messages inbox as a conversation, whether you want it or not. The sad fact is that there is no way to disable this. The best that you can do for now is to manually delete the unwanted conversations, and that is a total pain.


Here is how to disable Facebook chat saving directly in the messages;

  • Go to "privacy setting"
  • On the bottom choose "Apps and Websites"
  • Below the "Apps and Websites" click "edit your setting"
  • On the section of "Apps you use" click "edit setting" you can see you have an app "chat history manager" that generate auto save of your chat log into inbox.
  • On "chat history manager" there’s an "x" besides "edit setting" to remove the apps.
  • Click the "x" to remove the chat manager then click ok.
This is the best solution that I have found so far, let me know if you find a better solution. 

Update 2011/06/09

Sorry folks, bad news... That solution didn’t work.

After much digging around, searching, investigating and a few Inspector Clouseau impersonations, I have arrived at the conclusion that there is no way to disable Chat Saving Directly into Messages.

I can only hope that as FB rolls out its plans to become an integrated email/Cell/chat/social provider that they will improve the messaging system and fix this, but I won’t hold my breath.

Update 2011/06/17


There is still no word from the facebook development team on how they plan to deal with this, but I know a lot of facebook users are not happy with the chat saving. Some have even claimed that they have lost their girlfriends or jobs as a result of the feature, while others complain that it makes using system difficult as it clogs up the Facebook inbox. If the past precedent is anything to go by, the problem will probably be ignored until it reached a critical mass of unhappy users.

Help get this prioritized and tell Facebook what you think http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=suggestions 

    27 comments:

    1. i didnt see the chat history manager in my apps but it still auto saving my chat message? how come?

      ReplyDelete
    2. No chat history manager for me either

      ReplyDelete
    3. I also dont have that app in my list. instead i turned off all plattform apps, games and websites, i am not sure though that it worked.

      ReplyDelete
    4. Sorry guys, it seems that I jumped the gun with this one, please see the update to my post.

      ReplyDelete
    5. hey really its creating a problem...please do give a setting where we can enable / disable as per our choice the chat settings....

      ReplyDelete
    6. fuck my life !

      ReplyDelete
    7. can i tell sumting
      m really pissd off by this agar chnage nhi hua to i iwll switch off to sumother website
      seriously man it is irritating
      plzz tell the authority concernd make it as it was plzzzzzzzzzzza

      ReplyDelete
    8. Hi bhavna

      I feel your pain, go to http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=suggestions and tell the Facebook team to add an option to disable this.

      If enough people request it they might do it.

      ReplyDelete
    9. I Found how you can turn of messages in inbox, simply go to account settings, and delete facebook e-mail you made for the last ... After that the messages will not be saved in your inbox.

      ReplyDelete
    10. I don't even have a facebook e-mail account, my messages still get saved!

      ReplyDelete
    11. I have now submitted a request to Facebook Team and gently asked for a feature that makes you able to Disable the chat history to be saved amon the Messages.

      Thanks Carl for taking your time to Investigate this !!!

      /Carina , Sweden

      ReplyDelete
    12. Thanks Carina, we can only hope the FB team sort this out soon.

      ReplyDelete
    13. PROBLEM SOLVE GUYS!!!!!! just open the message you want to delete. then at the upper right, there's an action button, just click the dropdown and then select DELETE MESSAGES. that's it.

      ReplyDelete
    14. reached a critical mass of unhappy users!! ALREADY!!

      ReplyDelete
    15. Hi,

      Great tips...Rather than deleting each and every messages, its easy to archive threaded messages. The main messages page has this option. Then you can go back and look at them late if you need to.
      Thanks.

      ReplyDelete
    16. Facebook don't have option to disable chat history.

      ReplyDelete
    17. Kuhinje, did you even read the post?

      ReplyDelete
    18. Thanks you for providing such good information. About the friends displayed, update your settings to all click on the little wheel thinly on the facebook chat.

      ---------------
      SEO Company India

      ReplyDelete
    19. Since there's no easy way to disable chat history archiving, you may want to have a look at fbsweeper. It'll automatically delete message and chat history. Just tell it how often to check and how old they have to be to delete.

      ReplyDelete
    20. Does anyone know how far back chat history is saved? I am wondering if chat history was being saved in the messages back in the summer of 2010? I delete all of my messages, so I can't back track. But was wondering if the person I was conversing with in May of '10 would have our chat conversation saved in his messages?

      ReplyDelete
    21. hello, everybody, good mornig, let's go to hands on, so i was very angry about this new facebook's feature. and i get it.this is my remedy. i didn't disable such feature, insted of i went offline on the facebook website, and i set up a software (by the way is open source, that's mean you don't need any kind of license for use it) its name is pigdin that is a universal chat client, you can add accounts like facebook,gmail talk,hotmail,yahoo, etc. here is the link where you can found a lot of documentation about it.

      http://www.pidgin.im/

      with that solution, i have not saved messages into facebook's website, because everyting is handle by pidgin universal chat client.

      cheers, and good luck

      ReplyDelete
    22. Thank you for this. I am getting so fed up of people sending me invites for applications that I have no interest in. I must get about 50 invites to play those farm and cafe games every day!

      ReplyDelete
    23. Hi Yasmeen

      Have a look at http://www.cio.com/article/692624/Facebook_Tip_How_to_Block_Annoying_App_and_Event_Invites for information on blocking application invites and news feed spam.

      ReplyDelete
    24. "some have even claimed that they have lost their girlfriends or jobs as a result of the feature"

      Uh, you lost your girlfriend or job because you were having inappropriate conversations, not because Facebook saved them.

      Don't blame your being a scumbag on a Facebook feature, it's pathetic.

      ReplyDelete
    25. I have the new format , I have been not used it so I normally keep everything set to “offline” unless I am looking for somebody in particular to be on, like a family member, to chat with. :D

      ReplyDelete