For the last few weeks or so, Facebook updates to the Android have meant that the app’s previously very useful contact sync between your Facebook and phone have stopped working. Which is quite the pain if you use it to contact people or as a way of adding profile photos for all your contacts.
Thankfully, however, it’s actually possible to roll back these changes and get an older version of Facebook installed on your phone.
Visit the APK Mirror site and download a version of Facebook from before you noticed the contact sync error occuring for you. The earlier you go back, the more Facebook functionality will be lost but the best option for getting this to work is version 27.
Click on this and download. This will now save to your files on your phone. You can now uninstall the Facebook you have on your phone, before we install the older version.
Go into your files and then downloads and you should find a file with Facebook in the name and ending in the extension .apk. Simply click this and you’ll be on your way to installing an old version of Facebook. (You might get a security warning here – allow this app to update once and you should be good to go.)
Once you’ve updated this, navigate to the My Apps section in the play store and choose Facebook. You’ll want to disable the auto – update functionality here to stop a newer version of Facebook overtaking your good work.
So now you’ve set the old app up, head into it and ignore it’s pleas to be updated. You can now go to the menu, App Settings and should find the elusive contact sync button at the very bottom. Set things up how you want to there and you should be good to go.
I’m happy to have my contacts back to normal after a week’s worth of hassle. Hopefully this new approach from Facebook is simply an oversight and not a design choice. If they update their app and re-instate contact syncing I’ll update this post as soon as possible!