How do I email photos from my cell phone to Facebook?

I'm always on the go and seem to constantly bump into interesting and weird situations. I'd love to be able to take those photos and share them with my friends on Facebook, but I don't know how to connect my phone with my Facebook account. Can you step me through this entire process, please?

Dave's Answer:

Facebook recently introduced a new interface to the service and I believe that one of the things that's changed is this very capability. It used to be that it was pretty darn hard to figure out how to do this and involved a bunch of steps. Now as long as you remember the magic email address of mobile@facebook.com it's pretty darn easy to set things up.

If you promise not to try and hack my phone or Facebook account, I'll show you what I did to pair my Apple iPhone 3G with my Facebook profile so that I can easily email photographs up to my Facebook account and share 'em with my followers, just as you seek to do with your pictures.

There are different paths to the same end point, but I decided to start by emailing an interesting photograph to "mobile@facebook.com", to see what would happen.

I started out looking at a photo on my iPhone:

Tapping on the curled arrow on the lower left corner brings up a menu of different things I can do with that particular photographic image:

If you guessed I tapped on "Email Photo", you'd be right.

The iPhone then moves you to the email application with a typical blank set of fields to fill in. I typed "mobile@facebook.com", along with a subject line that I hope will become the caption of the photo, as you can see:

A tap on "Send" and it's off...

Am I done? Nope, not even close. But it's not too bad. About 90 seconds later a response comes from Facebook:

Okay, so I can do that. I log in to my Facebook account and go to the URL specified, facebook.com/mobile, just to see:

I click on "+ Activate Facebook Mobile" and suddenly the lower left of the existing page is highlighted:

I can enter my phone number, but that's actually work, so instead I'll click on the small text link "Already have a confirmation code?" because, well, I do:

With the code that Facebook emailed me entered on this page, I click on "Confirm" and see:

Done!

Now, where's that picture I just uploaded?

To track it down, I went back to my home page on Facebook, then clicked on the "Photos" choice under Applications:

Clicking on it shows me a bunch of photos from other people, but there's a small link "My Photos" that I click on:

There we go, the "Mobile Uploads" tab is what we want! Click on it and:

That's a winner! It's the photo that I emailed from my iPhone to my Facebook account and it worked. How about that!

Hope that helps you get the most out of Facebook. I'd also like to let you know that I have quite a bit of Facebook help here on the site and that I also have an Ask Dave Taylor Facebook Fan Page that I invite you to join.

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Categorized: Facebook Help , iPhone and Cell Phone Help (Article 8525, Written by Dave Taylor)
Tagged: cell phones, facebook, facebook photographs, mobile facebook
Previous: How do I import my blog entries or RSS feed into Facebook?
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Reader Comments To Date: 22

Sue J said, on October 29, 2008 4:09 PM:

Anyone else with an iPhone suddenly not able to use mobile@facebook.com ??? I get the message: 'Sorry, we cannot support uploads sent via email. Upload photos from your iPhone with our free application, Facebook for iPhone' ....

I've been using the email method for a year .... anoe know whats going on??

Thanks

Sue J

lalita said, on November 7, 2008 10:18 AM:

great

Thatofatso Maswabi said, on November 16, 2008 10:10 AM:

I want to register in facebook

cosmorochester said, on January 1, 2009 8:42 AM:

This doesn't work anymore. But Facebook Mobile app uploads photos iPhone photos just fine.

Tamsyn Engelbrecht said, on January 10, 2009 4:24 AM:

I mailed my photo twice and i do not see an of my photos on facebook what should i do now?

Paul Gordon said, on March 1, 2009 5:30 PM:

I tried to send pics to mobile@facebook.com and i got emails saying "you have uploaded from an unrecognized or unsupported address. If you are sending from a phone you carrier may not be recognized by facebook. Please try again in 24 hours." How do I fix this?

Daniel said, on July 1, 2009 9:29 AM:

I was also looking for ways to post pictures from my iPhone to facebook through e-mail because this would enable me to post a picture to Flickr and Facebook at the same time.

Unfortunately I get the following reply when I send a picture to Facebook by e-mail:

"Sorry, we cannot support uploads sent via email. Upload photos from your iPhone with our free application, Facebook for iPhone."

The application works much slower than e-mailing so I'm quite dissapointed...

primal convoy in Japan said, on July 1, 2009 8:26 PM:

same with me. facebook are being ethnocentric again by refusing international phones without sms from emailing. With livejournal, for example, they let ANY registered email address send pictures, so then you could use your phone email by sort of proxy.

Shame on you facebook!

Rhonda said, on September 10, 2009 6:43 PM:

I have an IPhone and when I went through your steps, I got the email and it said

Sorry, we cannot support uploads sent via email to this address. Use the Facebook for iPhone Application to upload photos, or see http://www.facebook.com/mobile for more options.

Not sure what I did wrong....

Laura said, on March 4, 2010 6:50 PM:

Hi,

Can you provide help for uploading photos from my BlackBerry to FB? It used to work just fine, but now it does not. I tried e-mailing the photo to mobile@facebook.com but I am getting the same message everyone else here is saying they have received.

Please help!

Thanks so much,
Laura

Brittney said, on November 20, 2010 7:38 PM:

I actually have an actual email address I send my pictures to facebook. It's emailherexxxx@m.facebook.com. I didn't put the actual address, as I don't want other people's pictures on my facebook.(; I don't remember how I got the email and I'm trying to help a friend aquire the same. I guess the "mobile@facebook.com" isn't working for her...

princess said, on April 2, 2011 8:08 PM:

i have samsung phone how do i send my picture to facebook

James said, on May 28, 2011 11:03 AM:

how do i send pics from my facebook account to my email ? jmsclark35@yahoo.com

Jennifer said, on September 5, 2011 5:55 PM:

This was very helpful! xD but is there a way to have the photo uploaded to a SPECIFIC album? I made an album and i want photos in it uploaded by my mobile. Get it? Please help and email me if there's a way!!!!?????

Abbey Pratt said, on September 14, 2011 6:22 PM:

I can't remember what email thing to send the pic to :l and this website wasnt very helpful FACEBOOK SUCKS NOW :(

mary goldwater said, on September 26, 2011 6:28 AM:

I have been sending photos to facebook by e-mail with a password, that's the only way I know how to do it and it's not working anymore. Is this the new facebook policy? Mary Goldwater

Kim said, on December 16, 2011 7:52 AM:

I have a samsung impression and I had been posting pics from my cell with no problem.About 3 weeks ago it stopped working.I had changed my password so I am thinking that is when it started.
Any suggestions?

frankie braun said, on February 4, 2012 11:27 AM:

i have an LG android phone ,and since f/book is constantly changing i am no longer able to send my photos from my cell to f/b,it says i require a personal confirmation code,which ive tried it all,and still no code ,can u help

martti_s said, on March 3, 2012 4:59 AM:

For iPad I gave up and bought the Friendly app from the store.
You do not have to bother about emailing anything. the pix just gets to your FBook status, in the Friendly Photos folder.
Then you share them and your stupidity is there for all to see!

Somehow, I liked the Android better than the iPad.
Maybe it is a question of getting used to.
I hope so.

Glyn Hope said, on May 8, 2012 1:15 PM:

I cheat. I simply upoload mine to photobucket from my mobile then paste the URL on facebook. Easy.

ABHAY SINGH said, on June 13, 2012 1:50 PM:

CAN YOU HELD FOR PHOTO UPLODE IN MY SUMSUNG FB?

carolyn said, on July 10, 2012 12:27 PM:

how to send pics to facebook

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!

How do I email photos from my cell phone to Facebook?

Reader Comments To Date: 22

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!

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