Facebook may let you turn off in-app notification dots

Social networking giant Facebook is testing a toggle to turn off the red-coloured in-app notification dots on its homescreen which until now had to be manually checked to get ridden off.

The company has confirmed that this is a new global test that started recently on iOS and Android for a subset of users.

"We are testing new ways to give people more control over the notifications they receive in the Facebook app," TechCrunch quoted a Facebook spokesperson as saying on Tuesday.

It is no new information that the anxiety-triggering notification dots make many people feel unsettled - a psychological quirk that Facebook has been taking advantage of to get the taps.

However, the company seems to be realising that its growth hacking can backfire if its pleas for engagement actually deters users from opening its app in the first place, the report said. The test was first spotted earlier this year by famed reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong.

"It's related to the work we're doing with the well-being team. We're thinking about how people spend their time in the app and making sure that it's time well spent," the spokesperson added.

As part of its experiments, Facebook plans to continue offering additional ways to personalise notifications to keep users alert of what is happening around them.

"People don't necessarily want to see a notification on the badge (the in-app dots on tabs) if they're already getting notifications in the jewel (the red counter on the Facebook app icon on the phone's homescreen)," the spokesperson noted.

The option to turn off the notification dots would be available under the Settings and Privacy option. Precise details about the official roll-out of the feature remains unknown for now.