How do I find a specific post I made on Facebook?

Maybe you remember a funny meme your friend posted to your Facebook wall back in 2020. But your stomach sinks at the prospect of searching through years on your timeline. Don’t worry. We’ll share an easier way to find the things you’re looking for.

This tech tip will tell you how to search for something on your Facebook page. But before we dive into this step-by-step guide, you should know that there’s a similar trick you can use to filter old text messages. Tap or click here to search through messages on iPhone and Android.

You can thank a reader named Art for this trick. He asked Kim how to find old Facebook posts from years ago. Currently, he manually scrolls through his old posts, but he eventually throws in the towel because it takes so long.

He asked Kim, “How can I find it quickly?”

Luckily, the team at the Komando HQ knew what Art needed to do. Instead of wasting hours scrolling down your Facebook wall, try this.

By the way, if you ever need Kim’s help with a tech issue, here are a few ways to reach out. You might even make a guest appearance on the Kim Komando Show! Please be patient, though. We plan episodes ahead of time, so it might take a few weeks to get on the air.

Tech news that matters to you, daily

Privacy, security, the latest trends and the info you need to live your best digital life.

Once we heard from Art, we knew we had to share this trick. Just follow the steps below to do an advanced search on Facebook. You can quickly find a specific Facebook post you remember — without having to scroll for a long time.

It all comes down to the filter button on your profile page. Click this button and you’ll be able to filter your posts by:

• Year.
• Tagged location.
• Keywords and more.

First, open Facebook on your computer and navigate to your profile page. Then tap the “…” option on the right side of your screen. Click the three dots, and a small pop-up with many options will appear. It will look something like this:

Your options might look different from Kim’s, but one option will definitely be there: Search. Select the word Search to start filtering posts.

Once you select Search, a new window will pop up. Use it to enter specific keywords you’re looking for. Maybe you want to find a funny cat video your cousin posted on your wall a few years ago. 

In that case, look up the word cat and hit enter, or click Search this profile. Here’s what it will look like on your screen:

Once you hit enter or select Search this profile, a new page will pop up. Here’s where you can filter by location and time. You can even choose which order you want to see the posts in. 

Your page will look something like this:

If you have any friends who love using Facebook, be sure to share it with them. This time-saving tech trick is a lifesaver for anyone who has ever typed into Google, “How do I find old posts on Facebook without scrolling?”

Now, you’re just like Art. You don’t have to wonder how to find posts from years ago on Facebook. Thanks to this life hack, you’re more tech-savvy than ever before!

More tech tips worth checking out

Take a break from Facebook in 6 simple steps

Hackers are after Google and Facebook accounts – Give yours this quick check now

It's been almost two years since Facebook launched Graph Search, an ambitious and all-encompassing tool that you could use to search through your connections based on their Facebook behaviors. Now, the company is introducing its next big update to its search product, and it's the kind of idea that's so simple on the surface it feels surprising that Facebook didn't have it already. Starting today, Facebook users can use keywords to search for specific individual posts, not just for other users and pages.

Now, when you start typing an entry into Facebook's search box, it'll offer you keyword suggestions for any name you might enter — Facebook's first example was someone typing the name "Jessica," with the autocomplete suggesting searches for "Jessica wedding" and "Jessica muir woods." Tapping on those suggestions now brings up a "post-centric" search results page for individual Facebook posts containing those words. You'll still be able to search for the connections between people in your network using Graph Search, but Facebook believes these new search results will particularly work better on mobile — an initiative that continues to be of utmost importance to the company.

"People want mobile," says search product manager Rousseau Kazi. "We know this is a company priority, a search priority. People want a stronger, better, faster mobile search." And Facebook believes people want to find not just other people with search, but specific memories, photos, articles, and other content that users share. "We have more than just the humans on Facebook," says search product manager Rousseau Kazi. "People share what makes us human on Facebook, which is really powerful."

He then gave us a pretty specific example that illustrated how the feature works. A few months ago, Kazi wore an entirely plaid outfit to work after losing a bet, and some of his co-workers took photos of him and posted them to Facebook. Months later, a search for "Rousseau Kazi plaid" pulled up a number of specific posts that friends in his network had shared that contained both his name and the word "plaid."

"People share what makes us human on Facebook, which is really powerful."

Another example Kazi showed us was a search for "Mark Zuckerberg ebola" — which pulled up some posts that people in his network had shared surrounding Zuckerberg's $25 million donation to fighting Ebola earlier this fall. Kazi was quick to note while showing this feature off that these new search results only pull in posts from people in your network — it's not a way to search everything posted on Facebook, and your privacy settings remain intact. "You can only find posts that have been shared with you," says Kazi. "There's no change to privacy, this is only things that your friends and your community have shared with you.

It's mostly just a way to find things that you might have seen on Facebook that you want to check out again, and it feels much more like how most people think of searching on Google than Graph Search does. "Our main takeaway here was that [Graph Search] phrases are complex," says Kazi. "The thing here is that we learned that for the typical person, this is just a lot of work to access this information — we want to lower that barrier to entry."

The new search features are rolling out as of today on the desktop, and it should show up in an updated iOS app soon, as well. Facebook told us that it should be available to all US users within a few weeks, and once the launch is complete the company will start working on bringing it to Android and other locales. As for the existing Graph Search, Facebook also noted that it is finally coming to mobile, something Zuckerberg hinted would be coming way back in February of this year. Just as with this new keyboard-based search, Graph Search will first be available on iPhone and will roll out to Android users soon.

How do I find a post I made on Facebook?

Can you search for an old post on Facebook?