Friendly Plus Social Browser

Some update to Facebook yet again removed the option to sort by most recent, never mind the fact that it would never stay on that setting anyway. This app immediately is miles ahead - right from setup (which only takes seconds) I can choose to set the news feed to most recent, and it stays that way! Plus I don't have to download yet another app just to be able to message on Facebook now (I stubbornly refused to ever download or use their messenger app, I think that's such a crap model). And, no ads. Well worth the $3, highly recommend! Update January ‘24: Not working nearly as well anymore. The top bar is inaccessible and when I refresh the most recent feed for new posts, it takes me to another view entirely - all of a sudden it’s things from days ago appearing first in the feed and I can’t go back to the most recent view unless I force quit and reopen the app. Second update January ‘24 There was a version update and about all it fixed was the top bar. If I reopen the app after not using for a period of time it still resorts to something like most popular. Message and all other icons gone so that has been broken in the new update. And for some stupid reason, reporting an issue requires me to have an email address associated ahead of time, just flashes an error that “no email configured on device” but no info on how to address. And even though I do have one for my FB account. Turns out it forces you to add your email to the native Apple Mail app to report which is also extremely dumb. I use the gmail app stop trying to make me use other crap for the simple aspect of reporting a technical issue. I’m ready to delete this and without this, Facebook entirely.

One last update (December 2023). I still can’t recommend this app as none of the issues I’ve described have been fixed by any of the most recent updates. Updating this review to note that the most recent update (summer 2023) has further broken this app. Instagram won’t load at all and Facebook loads incorrectly 9/10 times. (The good news is that I’m now finally deleting my Facebook.) It’s a shame because it was once the perfect app. Now it’s unusable. I loved this app (paid version) because it let me sort Facebook posts by most recent instead of letting an algorithm direct my attention. And I love the ability to block ads. But lately it’s become increasingly buggy. Sorting by most recent no longer shows every post. And, as of today, I can no longer see groups (which I prefer to check manually instead of following). I hope they update it. I will probably keep it since I’ve already paid, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone searching for a functioning way to manage social media accounts.

UPDATE: The very latest update seems to have resolved the issues I reported below and reverted the app to the wonderful less-crowded and more-sane interface. I’m guessing perhaps Facebook’s latest update stymied the devs for a bit? Anyway, happy to be back up and running! Genuinely unfortunate: this has been the app I’ve recommended for *years* to friends and family looking to escape the mess of Facebook’s invasive tracking and awful UI. Unfortunately the latest update has removed everything successful about this app (the clean & usable UI, the filtering and ad blocking, the custom filters) and replaced it with a broken encapsulation of the Facebook mobile UI, which is a mess-and-a-half on its own. If I wanted that, I’d load Facebook in Safari. One hopes this is temporary or I guess I’ll need to find a replacement for Friendly.