Fix: Facebook app keeps stopping on Android

Love it or hate it, Facebook has a massive user base and many people rely on it. It’s not as bad of an app, from the user experience perspective, as it was a couple of years ago but it still tends to pile up a lot of data and use too much battery in the background. To add insult to injury, some users report that the Facebook app keeps stopping on Android. For no apparent reason. If you are among them, check the solutions we provided below to swiftly deal with this problem.

Table of contents:

1. Clear cache and data from the app
2. Reinstall Facebook
3. Check Facebook permissions
4. Rollback to an older version of the app
5. Try alternative Facebook wrappers

What to do when the Facebook app keeps stopping?

If the Facebook app keeps stopping, loading slowly, or outright crashing, make sure to clear locally-stored data first. Then, check permissions or reinstall the app.

If you are still stuck with the same issue, make sure to downgrade the app with an APK or temporarily switch to a wrapper app.

1. Clear cache and data from the app

Let’s start by clearing locally-stored data from the app. You can clear only the cache directly from the app but, just to be sure, it’s better to clear everything and start from scratch. Facebook for Android is notorious for pilling up a lot of data to internal storage in order to provide better loading speeds and limited offline access.

All that data surely leads to issues from time to time and this particular problem can be tied up to data corruption. Most of the time, at least.

Here’s how to clear cache and data from the Facebook app on Android:

1. Navigate to Settings > Apps > All apps > Facebook.
2. Tap Storage.
3. Tap Clear storage. Don’t forget to back up any photos or videos from the Facebook folder in the internal storage. The following action will delete them.
4. Once prompted, tap OK.
5. Restart your device and open Facebook.
6. Sign in again and look for improvements.

2.  Reinstall Facebook

The next step you can try if the previous one failed is to simply reinstall the app. If you recently updated your firmware, there’s a slight possibility that broke Facebook for you. In addition, it’s good to reinstall apps from time to time, if they start working slower than usual or have issues with certain features.

Here’s how to reinstall the Facebook app on Android:

1. Open Play Store.
2. Locate Facebook.
3. Tap Uninstall.
4. Restart your device.
5. Again, open the Play Store and install Facebook.
6. Sign in and look for improvements.

3. Check Facebook permissions

If Facebook keeps stopping on your Android even after previous steps, make sure to also check permissions. If there’s an action you are trying but Facebook doesn’t have particular permission, it might crash. Although in principle, you should see another prompt to grant the necessary permission, if you haven’t set it to Deny permission for good.

Here’s how to check Facebook permissions in system settings:

1. Open Settings.
2. Choose Apps & notifications (Apps).
3. Select All apps.
4. Open Facebook.
5. Tap Permissions.
6. Grant all permissions to Facebook and try using the app again.

4. Rollback to an older version of the app

There’s an alternative to using the latest stable version obtained from Play Store that might be broken. As an alternative, you can download an older version via an APK and sideload it on your device. Older versions might lack some fresh features but they also might work in comparison to the latest official one.

If you are not aware of sideloading APKs on your device and installing apps from third-party sources, there’s much to learn, here. Not only this can be used to obtain older versions of Android apps, but you can also get apps that are region-restricted. Which is great.

Here’s how to rollback Facebook via an APK:

1. Navigate to APKMirror and download an older APK version of Facebook. Alternatively, you can try any other version except the one currently installed on your device. Beta and Alpha versions are also an option but we suggest avoiding them due to stability issues.
2. Uninstall the app.
3. Allow app installation from external sources.
4. Install APK, sign in, and look for improvements.

5. Try alternative Facebook wrappers

Finally, if the Facebook app just won’t work for you and keeps stopping on Android, there are a few alternatives, like Facebook Lite (found on the Play Store), that can replace it for the time being. You can also use any browser to access your Facebook feed for the time being, while keeping Facebook Messenger for chat purposes.

That’s it. Thank you for reading, make sure to check our social media (Twitter and Facebook) and share your thoughts on the issue in the comments section below. We look forward to hearing from you.