Restore Old Facebook Profiles With Timeline Remove for Chrome

The reception of Facebook's Timeline profile design has been highly controversial so far, with part of the userbase rejecting it. With Facebook rolling out the new profile design for everybody, there is no turning back from that point on. Users who switched from the old Facebook profile to the new Timeline profile were the first to notice that it was not possible to return to the old profile once the new one had been activated.

With no official option provided, Facebook users turned to third party solutions. First solutions to pop up were userscripts that modified the new profile pages to look like previous ones.

Timeline Remove is a free Google Chrome extension that does the same thing. It turns Timeline profiles into regular profiles again on Facebook. It needs to be noted though that this works only on computers the extension is installed in, and that profile visitors will still see the new profiles on Facebook. These solution are therefor only practicable for users who dislike Timeline and do not want to see a single trace of it on Facebook.

Remove Facebook Timeline

Once you have installed the extension in Google Chrome, you will notice that all Facebook profiles that you visit resemble the old profiles on the social networking site. Here is Marc Zuckerberg's modified profile. If you visit the profile without the extension, installed, you will see the Timeline profile instead.

The Google Chrome extension adds a button to the browser's address bar that you can use to enable or disable the functionality. This can be useful if you need to check how your own profile or a Facebook page looks like for other users who do not have the extension installed. If you do not need that functionality, you can right-click the icon and select to hide it from the context menu.

Verdict

Timeline Remove works fine right now. The developers need to monitor Facebook for changes though, as it could otherwise be that the extension stops working after a profile page update. This is by far the biggest uncertainty when it comes to this extension.  Facebook users who dislike the timeline and work with Chrome can install the extension to get rid of it.

Do you know of a similar extension / option for other web browsers? Post your solutions in the comments below.

Update: Timeline Remove is no longer available in the Chrome Web Store. I suggest you use the TL Remove extension instead which is still working.

Advertisement