How to get notified of every new post in a Facebook group

Why you miss posts: groups start on Highlights

When you join a group, Facebook sets its notifications to Highlights. Each group offers four choices, as Facebook's Help Center describes them:

• All posts: a notification whenever someone posts in the group.
• Highlights: notifications for suggested posts and posts from your friends.
• Friends' posts: notifications whenever your friends post.
• Off: no notifications when anyone posts.

In a group where you have few friends, Highlights means Facebook decides which posts you hear about. A neighbor asking for exactly what you offer may never reach your notifications.

Turn on All posts for a group

1. Go to facebook.com/groups and open the group.
2. Click Options at the top right, under the group's cover photo.
3. Choose Manage notifications.
4. Select All posts.

The setting belongs to that one group, so repeat it in each group you want to follow. The Facebook app offers the same choices. The same menu lists push notifications separately; check them if you want these posts to reach your phone as well as the notifications list.

Sort the group by new posts

A group opens in the post order its admins chose, which isn't always newest first. To see new posts first, click the sort option at the top of the group's posts, which reads Most relevant, Recent activity or New posts, and choose New posts.

Recent activity is different: it brings up posts with new comments, so an old post with a fresh reply can sit above a new request. And your choice doesn't stick: according to Facebook, the group returns to its admins' order on your next visit, so you sort it again each time.

Then the catch: every post means every post

All posts does what it says. In a busy local group that's every yard sale, lost pet, road closure and business promoting itself, with the occasional request you're looking for somewhere among them. Across ten groups, your notifications become a second feed to read through, and Facebook gives you no way to filter them by what a post is asking for.

It works well for a small, quiet group where most posts matter to you. In large groups, it trades one problem for another: you no longer miss posts, but you read all of them to find the few you want. And once the notifications become too many to read, it's tempting to switch them off, which brings back the first problem.

Get told about the posts that match

Facebook can notify you about every post or only some, but it can't tell which posts are asking for what you offer. That's the job GroupSignal does.

You describe what you're looking for in a sentence, such as Find people asking for a house cleaner or a regular cleaning service, and choose the groups. The GroupSignal Chrome extension reads new posts in those groups, and AI checks each one against your description. Posts that fit arrive in your Sosaly inbox with a short reason; the rest are discarded. A new AI match raises a browser alert, and you can review your matches on any device, including your phone.

It reads groups while Chrome is open on your computer and signed in to Facebook. After Chrome has been closed, it catches up on posts from up to the last 24 hours, and Sosaly shows when each group was last checked. For the details, see what a Chrome extension can and can't do and how to write a monitor.