Public Service Announcement: How to Uninstall Facebook Home

Friday was launch day for Facebook Home, but thankfully only for a few devices. If you have a Galaxy S III, S4, HTC One, One X, or One X+ you can install Home through Google Play. I have a Galaxy S III so I gave Home a test drive over the weekend. My first impressions weren’t great, and after a few frustrating days of grunting at my phone like a caveman I can’t take it anymore. I’m uninstalling Home, and in case you need it, here’s how.

Once you’ve let Facebook Home infect your phone, you might be scared that there’s no going back without taking major steps, but thankfully it’s pretty simple. It’s not much different than installing any other app, but there are a few extra steps. The first thing you’ll need to do is get out of Facebook Home and into your old launcher. To do that, go to the full list of your apps in Home and scroll down to the last one which says “More”.

This should take you back to your old home screen and launcher, which in my case was Touch Whiz. I haven’t used any other launchers on my device, but I image they’re similar enough that you can still follow these instructions.

Now that you’re in a real launcher, go to your full list of apps and widgets and find the Facebook Home icon. Hitting the “Menu” button on my S III brings up a menu with “Uninstall” as an option.

Now select the Home icon, and it will prompt you to make sure you want to uninstall Facebook Home. If your experience was anything like mine, you do. You really, really do.

Surprisingly, that’s it. For as invasive as Facebook Home seemed, it’s pretty easy to kill. Unfortunately, Chat Heads appears to have been built into the updated Facebook Messenger app, not into Home. As much as I hate Chat Heads, I love the Facebook Messenger app. I’m conflicted about uninstalling Messenger to get rid of Chat Heads, but I’m glad I got rid of Home.

Anyone have any tips on alternative messaging apps so I can be rid of this Chat Head nonsense once and for all?

(Chat Head images courtesy of Dan Maher and Jason Brown)

Relevant to your interests

• Here are my first impressions of using Facebook Home
• These are the full details of Facebook Home after the launch event
• Facebook added a new feature to tell everyone how you’re feeling