How to create a Facebook profile video

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Make your Facebook profile picture a video

1:05

If you feel your Facebook profile is too static, Facebook is giving you 7 seconds to work with. You now have the option of ditching your profile picture for a short, looping profile video.

To make a profile video from Facebook’s iOS or Android app, go to your profile page and tap your profile picture. On iOS, choose either Take a New Profile Video or Select Profile Video. On Android, the latter option is titled Upload Video or Photo.

Video profiles have been around since last fall for iOS, and with the iOS app, you can trim videos longer than 7 seconds to use as your Facebook profile. With Android, you can’t trim videos and must choose a video that is 7 seconds or less. Facebook for iOS also lets you mute the sound of profile videos, the option for which you’ll find when trimming your video. With Android, you are stuck with sound for profile videos. When profile videos first arrived on iOS, you were unable to edit videos, so I would expect trimming and muting options to come to Android at some point.

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After taking or uploading a video, you can then select a thumbnail from the video as your profile picture. The picture will show up in Facebook’s news feed. Only when people visit your profile page will they see your video, which helps people add a some flair to their profiles without making Facebook’s newsfeed overly distracting.

Elsewhere in the update is new bio field that lets you add a short, 101-character blurb about yourself and featured photos that let you select the five photos that appear on the mobile version of your profile page. Both of these features are available from your profile page on both mobile and desktop platforms.

Lastly, you can set a temporary Facebook profile picture (but not video) for both iOS and Android. When you select a new photo to use for your profile picture, you’ll see a small Make temporary button in the lower-left corner of the Crop screen. Tap on this button and you can select 1 Hour, 1 Day, 1 Week or Custom.

Editors’ note, March 23, 2016: This review has been updated to include information about video profiles coming to Android.

(Via Facebook)