Photo analysis on Facebook: How to turn off the function | Haller Kreisblatt

If you don’t want the Facebook app to analyze your photos in the background, you can turn this function off. © Klaus-Dietmar Gabbert/dpa-tmn

A look at the metadata of smartphone photos can reveal a lot about a picture: Where was it taken and when? Has it been saved in your favorites? This is important information for the Facebook app when it wants to suggest suitable photos to share at the right moment. You can like that, but you don’t have to.

In any case, the Facebook app automatically searches for this and other information in the smartphone’s photo library in the standard settings, reports Stiftung Warentest. If you don’t want this, you have to go to the settings and prohibit photo analysis. And this is how it works:

• Tap the menu symbol at the bottom right (iOS). Android users tap the symbol with the three lines or the gear symbol at the top right in the Facebook app. Depending on the app version and the manufacturer of the smartphone, the function may be accessed in a different way.
• Under “Settings and privacy”, tap “Settings”. Then select “Suggestions for sharing content from your recordings”.
• Now turn off the options “Personalized sharing suggestions from your camera roll” and “Suggestions from your camera roll as you move around Facebook”.

If you would rather not grant any more access to your photos, you can simply withdraw this permission from the Facebook app on iOS. You can do this in the settings under “Privacy & Security” and by turning off “Photos”. On Android, the function can be found under app permissions. Depending on the manufacturer and version, you can access these either via the menu or by long-pressing the app symbol and then the “i” symbol.

However, turning it off is not entirely without consequences. After that, you will no longer be able to share or download photos when using the Facebook app.