You can now tell Facebook to shut up for more than 8 hours at a time

Shoehorned into an update to a coronavirus-response blog post, Facebook announced a feature called Quiet Mode. It comes nearly a month after app researching savant Jane Manchun Wong spotted a test for the tool. Quiet Mode falls under the “Your Time on Facebook” section of your settings. Users can turn it on at a moment’s notice or schedule it to mute most notifications.

Shhhhhhh — From eight of your acquaintances going Live to your aunt posting misinformation, Facebook’s push notifications can be a plague. The company desperately tries to pull us into the app, knowing full well people are spending increasingly less time on it. You can already turn these notifications off in your settings individually or completely. Now, muting everything can be set to last anywhere from 15 minutes to eight hours.

Quiet Mode sits more in the digital wellbeing space than the existing notification management options. Scheduling the notification lockdown doesn’t just keep the noise out, it also dissuades you from jumping back in. When users open Facebook, they’ll be reminded they activated Quiet Mode. Even if you reflexively tap on the app, you can remember the vitriol that awaits and back away.

The new feature also allows you to set a more complex schedule that covers the entire week and doesn’t limit how long each notification blackout lasts. Though just deleting the app would be better for us all, groups, keeping relatives in line, and the most comprehensive birthday calendar around keep many people trapped. Quiet Mode could be the next best thing.