Eternal Sunshine your memories on Facebook (and iPhone and Android)

Anula Wiwatowska - Offsite Editorial Lead

Last updated 30 September 2021

Facebook memories serve only two purposes:

To remind you how much more fit you were ten years ago
To remind you how dumb you were too.

Sometimes just to add injury to insult, these memories also pop up to remind you of the people who were in your life then.

It isn’t anything groundbreaking to say that memories sting. A happy snap from a few years ago can remind you of the best friend you fell out with, the family you no longer speak to, and even the one that got away.

No one wants that reminder. Sometimes you just wish that you could block out those memories, and remain in a blissful state of ignorance to times once had. While we can’t erase memories of certain people from our brains like in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, we can erase them from our Facebook memories.

If you’re ready to commit your last relationship to the annals of Facebook then just navigate to your Memories in the Facebook menu. In settings there are two options; Hide people and Hide dates. Here you can choose any person you are connecting with on Facebook, or a particular date range and Facebook will no longer serve you memories connected to them, or that period of time.

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Of course, blocking memories isn’t all about lost and unrequited loves. Sometimes you just don’t want to be reminded of how embarrassing it was when we wrote Facebook statuses in third person.

Although if you really want to move on and forget, there are even more extreme measures you can take to make sure you get even less reminders of the past. Google Photos and Apple Photos both throw you memories as well, and yes you can control the people who feature in these memories too.

To wipe a person from your Apple Photos, first navigate to People in your Albums. Select the person you want to forget and tap Feature this person less. You’ll then be offered two options, where you can either feature this person less but they will still pop up in group photos, or to remove them entirely and you will never see their face on your memories again.

Android users can also send old flames into the virtual void by going to Google Photos and tapping Photo settings. Go to Memories and select Hide people and pets or hide dates. Here you’ll be able to select and deselect who you want popping up in your memories.

Of course if there is anything that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind taught us, it’s that blocking out memories of someone isn’t a solution. They’re bound to creep back in, whether that be through someone else’s posts, or a sudden urge to go to Montauk.

Anula Wiwatowska

Offsite Editorial Lead | Instagram

Anula is the Off-Site Editorial Lead for WhistleOut Australia, and an award winning tech journalist. She has been writing about the Australian telco industry, and consumer technology for over five years, and has been known to tell her Uber driver which phone they should upgrade to next.

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