By Adam Mosseri, Product Management Director
We’re excited for the launch of iOS 8, and we’re making updates to Facebook over the coming weeks to make it feel at home on your device.
Designing Facebook for iOS 8
Facebook for iOS 8 will have an improved experience for people who want to share content from other apps to Facebook. By simply tapping the share icon and selecting Facebook, you can choose to share a link to a website from your browser, photos or videos from your camera roll, and content from other apps. Facebook for iOS 8 will have an updated share screen similar to what you already see in the Facebook app. From there, you can select the audience you want to share with, add a location, say what you’re doing, or tag friends.
We’re also making sure that Facebook looks great on the new iPhone screens. We’re creating assets for the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+ that take advantage of the new screen resolutions, making the experience bigger and clearer. We’re continuing to work to make sure all the features of our app work with the new OS. These updates will be available over the coming weeks.
Location Settings
Nothing has changed about how Facebook gets location information from devices, but Apple has updated its Location Services setting:
- With iOS 8, Apple has changed its Location Services setting. Before, there were only two choices for the kind of permission you could give an app: On or Off. Now, there are three choices: Always, While Using the App, or Never.
- When you update to iOS 8, if you previously used Facebook with Location Services set to “On,” you’ll notice that the location setting now starts out at “Always” (the new Apple setting option).
Facebook isn’t getting any new location information when you upgrade to iOS 8:
- You control your location information. Nothing is changing and Facebook will continue to respect the choices you’ve made about location.
- As always, Facebook doesn’t get location information from your device unless you enable Location Services.
- Facebook does not get location information from your device in the background (that is, while you’re not using the app) unless you give us permission by turning on a feature that requires this, like Nearby Friends. Also, if you choose to turn on a feature like this, you’ll always be able to use your Facebook settings to control whether Facebook gets your location information in the background.
For apps from Facebook that don’t have features that rely on getting location in the background, the Location Services setting for the iOS 8 versions will start at “While Using the App.” These apps include Messenger and Instagram.
To learn more about how location works, visit our Help Center.
We’ll continue to build out updates and new features for Facebook for iOS 8 over the coming weeks.