Facebook might seem like an ancient relic to some of you, but nope. It’s still very much a giant when it comes to social media platforms. And of course, they haven’t forgotten about the ones still sticking around in the blue platform. In the F8 2019 developer conference, amongst a horde of other announcements, Facebook Messenger app was one topic that also emerged in the discussion.
They announced a new desktop app for both Windows and macOS, which will include all the features currently available on the mobile app. So that means you get to make audio calls, group video calls and more. What’s more, is that users will also have a dedicated space for “closest connections”. The tab, available on the second tab on the app, will allow you to find Stories and messages of the close friends and family and share snippets of a mundane day or frustrated rants. And in case you decide to dedicate a post to a someone special that your family doesn’t know about, you have the option to choose who can see your post. Lookatchu Zuckie boi, saving our asses and all.
Businesses also have benefits to enjoy as the new desktop Facebook Messenger app will allow users to “collaborate on projects or multi-tasking while chatting in Messenger.”
iOS App is Getting an Update Too
Zuckerberg and team said that their priority is making the Facebook Messenger app faster and lighter. And to achieve that, they will use LightSpeed to make the app on iOS the “fastest private communication app on the entire planet.”
So, if the gods are on their side and everything goes according to their plan, you can expect a much more reliable app which will take up less space and not drain the life out the battery. In fact, according to Facebook’s team said that early tests showed that it was possible to reduce the size of the app from a whopping 127MB to less than 30MB. Now that’s definitely some good news.
Even the app’s speed got a boost. Get this – you can start the app in less than 1.3 seconds! Remember how earlier you’d close the app after losing your patience looking at the blue screen taking forever to load? Well, with this new change, we hope things take a turn for the better.
There’s also the company’s claim the re-engineered app is also set to be end-to-end encrypted by default. Along with that, Messenger will also get more ways to have content that disappears after a certain amount of time. Something like the current Stories – but with other content.
All these apps and features are still in the testing phase, and they plan to roll the app out sometime later in 2019. It remains to be seen what all changes will actually become available, but the wait is going to be a little long.