Facebook Features That No Longer Exist (Checked 2026)

Most of the Facebook features people remember did not vanish. They were removed on specific, documented dates, and almost every one of them was replaced by something else. Trending went on June 1, 2018, announced by Facebook itself. Nearby Friends and the location features around it stopped collecting data on May 31, 2022. The Gifts store closed on August 12, 2014. Notes stopped accepting new entries at the end of October 2020. The Poke, the one everybody assumes is gone, is the odd case: it was never formally killed, only buried. Below is each item with its date, its replacement, and the date we checked it.

Facebook Features That No Longer Exist: The Dated List

Every row here traces to a Facebook or Meta announcement, or to a named publication reporting on a named date. Where we could not find one, we say so further down instead of guessing.

Trending: The Clearest Case, Because Facebook Wrote It Down

Trending is the one to start with, because there is no ambiguity about it. Facebook published a post titled “Removing Trending From Facebook” on June 1, 2018, under the name of Alex Hardiman, then head of news products. The Washington Post, CBS News and the CBC all covered it that day.

The post is unusually candid about scale. Trending had launched in 2014, it was only ever available in five countries, and Facebook said it accounted for less than 1.5 percent of clicks to news publishers on average. Three things were named as taking its place: a Breaking News label, a local section called Today In, and news video inside Watch.

That is the template for the whole list. A feature is removed, a replacement is named in the same breath, and the replacement is usually smaller and less visible than the thing it replaced.

Notes: Removed by Attrition, Then Formally

Notes launched in 2006, when Facebook was still deciding whether it wanted to be a blogging platform. It was rebuilt with a cleaner, Medium-like editor in 2015, which is the version most people picture.

The ending is documented but not loudly. Facebook’s own support notice told users that creating and editing Notes would stop working after October 31, 2020, that already published Notes would stay on timelines, and that unpublished drafts would be deleted. Old Notes are still retrievable through the Download Your Information tool in account settings.

We flag one thing honestly. We could not find a Facebook newsroom post announcing the retirement of Notes, only the in product support notice and the reporting that followed it. That is weaker evidence than the Trending post, so treat the day of the month as reported rather than as official.

The Poke Never Actually Died, and That Matters

This is the correction most articles on this subject need.

There are two different Pokes. The poke button, the one from 2004, has never been formally removed. It was pushed further and further into submenus, revived briefly in 2017, and then hidden well enough that most people concluded it was gone. TechCrunch wrote about the 2017 attempt to make it happen again under that exact framing. If you can find the page, you can still send one.

The Poke app is a different product. It was a standalone iOS app built in about twelve days and released in December 2012 as an answer to Snapchat. It was pulled from the App Store in the second week of May 2014, along with the separate Facebook Camera app, and covered that week by Engadget, The Next Web, 9to5Mac and The Register.

So the honest answer to “what happened to the Poke” is that the app was discontinued in May 2014 and the button was demoted, not deleted. Anyone telling you Facebook killed the poke in a particular year is describing the demotion, not a removal.

The Location Features Went as a Group

On May 9, 2022, TechCrunch reported that Facebook was shutting Nearby Friends. It was not alone. Nearby Friends, Weather Alerts, Location History and Background Location were all switched off together, with collection stopping on May 31, 2022 and previously stored location history deleted on August 1, 2022. Users were told by email and by in product notice, and given the window in between to download a copy.

Facebook attributed the removal to low usage. Worth stating plainly, because it is the part readers care about: turning off Location History did not mean Facebook stopped collecting location. It meant that particular product, and that particular stored history, ended. Location continued to be used for other parts of the service under the same data policy.

Standalone Apps Are Where Facebook Features Go to Die

If you want a rule of thumb for this whole genre, it is that a Facebook feature spun out into its own app has a short life expectancy.

Moments, launched in 2015, used face recognition to sort your camera roll and share photos privately with the people in them. Facebook announced on January 24, 2019 that it would shut on February 25, 2019, with an export window running to May 2019. Engadget, TechCrunch and Fortune all covered the announcement that day.

M was Messenger’s concierge assistant, introduced in August 2015 and never taken out of limited beta. Its distinguishing feature was that people, not software, answered the hard requests. TechCrunch, CNN and Axios all reported the wind down on January 8, 2018, with users told the service was ending on January 19, 2018. The name survived for a while on the suggestion prompts inside Messenger, which is a very different product from a concierge.

The same pattern runs through the wider history of platforms that tried to be everything at once, which is the thread we follow in our guide to the platforms that shaped the internet and then vanished.

Gifts Had Three Endings, Not One

Gifts is the item most often written up wrongly, because it ended in stages.

The original virtual gift shop, the cupcakes and teddy bears, closed first. Facebook then relaunched Gifts as a real commerce product that shipped physical items. It dropped the physical goods and concentrated on gift cards, which were already the large majority of sales. Then TechCrunch published “An obituary for Facebook Gifts” on July 29, 2014, reporting that the whole service would close on August 12, 2014 and that the team was moving to the Buy button and related commerce work.

Three closures, three different products, one name. If an article gives you a single date for Facebook Gifts, it has flattened the sequence.

Renamed Is Not Removed

Two of the most common entries on lists like this are not removals at all.

The News Feed was renamed to simply Feed, reported by TechCrunch on February 15, 2022. Nothing about how it worked changed. The stated reason was that the word news made people think the feed was only news.

Check-in Deals survived the death of Daily Deals in August 2011, which is the exact distinction TechCrunch drew in its headline that day. Two products, similar names, different fates.

This is the same confusion that surrounds Facebook’s rivals. Google+ really did shut its consumer service, which is a genuine ending and one we cover in what happened to Google Plus. Compare that with the smaller networks in our account of the failed Facebook alternatives, where “failed” covers at least four different outcomes.

The Things We Could Not Date, and Why We Left Them Blank

This is the section other pages on this keyword skip, and it is the reason this one exists.

Facebook Questions. People genuinely remember it, and it is genuinely gone. We could not find a Facebook announcement or a dated report from a named publication giving a removal date. So this page prints no date for it.

The “Other” inbox. It was replaced by Message Requests. We could not confirm a specific changeover date from a primary source, so none is stated here.

The Ticker. The sidebar that showed a live stream of friends’ likes and comments was removed without a formal announcement. TechCrunch covered its disappearance at the time, and the framing in that coverage was that Facebook had removed it quietly. A quiet removal has no official date, and inventing one would be worse than admitting that.

Graph Search. Its search operators were withdrawn in stages rather than on a single day. We are not printing a date we cannot attach to a source.

The general point: a feature that Facebook announced has a date, and a feature Facebook simply stopped shipping usually does not. Any list that gives every entry a confident year is telling you something about the writer, not about Facebook.

Why a List Like This Goes Stale, and How to Check It Yourself

We checked every item on this page on September 7, 2026. That date matters more here than on most historical topics, for three reasons.

Features come back. The Poke has been revived at least once. Facebook Dating, Marketplace and Groups have all been rebuilt, moved and renamed over the years.

Removal is often regional first. Facebook News was removed in the UK, France and Germany months before the US and Australia. A feature you cannot find may still exist somewhere else.

Renaming looks identical to removal from inside the app. If a tab disappears and a differently named tab appears, most users read that as a deletion.

Two checks settle almost any version of this question. Meta’s own newsroom at about.fb.com carries dated posts for the changes the company chose to announce, and it is the only source that is definitionally primary. Your own Download Your Information archive holds the content you created in features that no longer exist, including old Notes, which is how you prove to yourself that you did not imagine one.

That habit of exporting first is what people learned the hard way when Google Reader shut down and when a whole creative community lost its work in the closure of Vine. The lesson transfers cleanly to Facebook: the archive is yours only while the feature holding it is still running.

FAQ

Is the Facebook poke gone?
The standalone Poke app was pulled from the App Store in the second week of May 2014. The poke button on Facebook itself was never formally removed. It was moved into deeper menus, briefly promoted again in 2017, and is difficult to find rather than deleted.

When did Facebook remove Trending?
June 1, 2018. Facebook announced it in a newsroom post titled “Removing Trending From Facebook” and said the feature had only ever run in five countries and drove less than 1.5 percent of clicks to news publishers on average.

Can I still get my old Facebook Notes?
You cannot create or edit Notes. Facebook’s support notice said that creating and editing would stop after October 31, 2020, that published Notes would remain on timelines, and that unpublished drafts would be deleted. Existing Notes can be retrieved through Download Your Information in account settings.

Why did Nearby Friends disappear?
Facebook cited low usage. Nearby Friends, Weather Alerts, Location History and Background Location all stopped collecting data on May 31, 2022, and stored location history was deleted on August 1, 2022. Facebook continued to use location for other parts of the service.

Did Facebook get rid of the News tab everywhere?
In two waves. The UK, France and Germany lost it in December 2023 after a September 2023 announcement. The US and Australia lost it in early April 2024 after Meta’s February 29, 2024 post “An Update on Facebook News.” News links still appear in Feed in both cases.

Which Facebook feature was removed with the least explanation?
The Ticker is the usual answer. It was withdrawn without a formal announcement, which is why no reliable removal date exists for it.

The Short Version

• Announced and dated: Daily Deals (August 26, 2011), Gifts (August 12, 2014), Trending (June 1, 2018), Moments (February 25, 2019), Nearby Friends and companions (May 31, 2022), Facebook News (December 2023 and April 2024).
• Discontinued as apps, not as ideas: Poke and Camera in May 2014, M in January 2018.
• Never formally removed: the poke button. Buried, revived, buried again.
• Renamed, not removed: News Feed became Feed on February 15, 2022.
• No date printed here: Questions, the Other inbox, the Ticker, Graph Search. Quiet removals do not leave dates, and a made up one is worse than a gap.
• Checked September 7, 2026. Features on this list can return, and some have.