Disable grouping of photos on the timeline

Question

Does anyone know when facebook groups photos in the same album on the timeline? Is it possible to prevent it from doing so? If you post one or 2 pictures a day (via API) wit

Answer 1

A method I've recently discovered is to post a pic in another album (one you haven't posted with) and then move it to the correct album. It won't be grouped up with the other pics when you post it on your timeline.

Answer 2

I've been looking for an alternative to Stéphane's answer because I need to upload pictures that don't comply with the User Generated Photos criteria. Also, my Web App might need to communicate with different Facebook apps, and that means creating custom actions for each of those, very cumbersome.

The solution I found to disable photo grouping is to find the ID of the "Timeline Photos" album and uploading the picture to it. I've tested it and so far it doesn't seem to group them.

I hope this helps to those who might be looking for an alternative that doesn't involve User Generated Photos.

Answer 3

This question is very interesting to developers who deal with images through the API. I see here two ways to ungroup photo posts.

1. Time

You could solve your problem by waiting the exact amount of time before uploading your photo, even if that would a mean way to proceed. For both page or user, photos will be grouped by albums:

• on the timeline, after exactly 10 hours (need more than 2 photos),
• on the news feed, after exactly 1 hour.

It actually uses the modified's Album parameter to know whether or not the new photo(s) will be grouped with the last group. That date is visible on the album's page:

Untitled Album Updated 34 minutes ago

Note : this is Facebook's behavior and algorithm, and there is no way to overcome it through the API. Also, we can't modify the value of the modified parameter.

2. User Generated photos

Something exists to solve your problem. It is called User Generated photos and it works with Open Graph.

You can allow your users to upload a single photo or multiple user generated photos for a single action.

In that case, your photos will be displayed in big sizes on both news feed and timeline and won't be grouped anymore. And you will still be able to add a description with a link. Moreover, it will promote your app because it indicates your app's name.

Readings:

• Concept: User Generated Photos
• How-to Upload A Single User Generated Photos
• How-to Upload Multiple User-Generated Photos (might be useful too)

By the way, this is what Instagram uses to share photos on Facebook. A good example to follow...

Answer 4

Using albums is not the correct tool for this and naturally it fails the tasks.

If your goal is to have new picture on the timeline let say every day but to use the grouping of albums ... for shared descriptions tags etc. just follow this steps:

1. Post the picture on the timeline ...
2. Select the picture and manually move it to an album.

Answer 5

This is not a way to "prevent" the grouping action, but it is a way to get your photo seen Larger in news feed with the ability to make your comments under it individually etc.

If you go to each individual photo you posted in facebook you can then click "share"

This will share it to your timeline (or alternatively someone else if you desire) and will do it as a status update. This means the picture will be large in the NEWS FEED

** I shared some photos from my flicker one at a time, but I had the same problem, they grouped in small little squares that often people would miss. So I shared them again essentially. They come up in the news feed as individual photos.

You may also want to note that they may then double up on yout timeline, if you only want them to show once, you'll need to hide the first one you posted on your time line as this is the one that came up in the little square (grouped) and most likely everyone missed