Perhaps as a response to popular rival app Snapchat, Facebook is reportedly testing a feature that lets users post to their News Feed only. This will allow you to prevent things you post from ever appearing on your Timeline — and from becoming more permanently preserved. 

“The Timeline on your profile is a great place to see a comprehensive history of your Facebook posts,” Facebook told Engadget. “We’ve heard feedback that sometimes, you may want to share a post with friends and family via News Feed and not have that post be displayed on your Timeline.”

Facebook users are already able to remove posts from their Timeline after the fact, but this new feature cuts out the middleman and prevents posts from hitting your profile in the first place. Here’s how it works: when you begin writing a new post, you will see a new checkbox that says “Hide From Your Timeline.” Once you check it and post, your content will only be visible for the period of time that it appears in your friends’ News Feeds, and then it will disappear. Well, almost; these “hidden from Timeline” posts are still visible via search.

This test is currently only available to Facebook users on the web version of the site, but don’t be surprised to see it rolled out to all platforms. The public has demanded the privacy that comes with disappearing posts, and it’s good news that Facebook appears to be listening.

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