When you’re chatting to friends, the last thing you should be thinking about is what button to press, which is just one of the reasons why Facebook has been making changes.
Whether you stuck with Facebook through thick and thin, and survived any random bannings, there’s a good chance that you may be using Facebook Messenger, the chat system that sits underneath Facebook’s social network.
You don’t need to be active on Facebook’s social platform to use it, and many aren’t, though the service does offer a way to bridge the messaging gap between operating systems.
For instance, while iPhone owners can use iMessage to talk to other iPhone owners, they often need to rely on a different messaging system to talk to friends on Androids, and that’s where Messenger comes in.
Used by around 1.3 billion people (yep), the platform has been undergoing changes over the past few years, and this week, users of Facebook Messenger will see one of its most important yet: a simplification of its design.
The changes being rolled out are based on ease of use, with Messenger cutting back from nine tabs to three, and making everything look just that much easier to use.
You’ll still be able to chat the way you used to, but now you’ll just find everything a little easier, and there’s also support for colour gradients for the chat bubbles, with a dark mode set to arrive soon to cut down on glare and possibly save a tiny bit of battery life on phones.
Folks who use Facebook’s Messenger app should start to see the changes very shortly, and if they’re not in now, either update your app or expect it in the next few weeks.
