Meta Brings Messenger Chats Back to the Facebook App

Facebook parent Meta is testing the ability to access Messenger chats via the Facebook app again. The feature was previously available in the Facebook app, but the company moved chats to the standalone messenger app in 2014. It also removed the feature from the mobile website, in 2016 in order to push users to use the Messenger app. Meta says it will extend the Messenger inbox testing to more users soon. The announcement comes weeks after the company updated Messenger’s end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) chats with several new features and improvements.

Meta in a recent blog post announced that it is bringing back the message inbox feature to the Facebook app. The platform has already started testing the feature with some users and will let users share content through messages on Facebook without having to switch to another app. The company is planning to expand testing to more users. Over 140 billion messages are sent across the company’s messaging apps every day, according to Meta. It also adds that the private sharing of Reels has also grown on the platform.

Additionally, Meta has also introduced community chats to some Facebook Groups, letting users connect more deeply in real-time. The firm says that users trying community chats across Facebook and Messenger increased by 50 percent last December.

Earlier this year, Facebook updated Messenger’s end-to-encrypted (E2EE) chats with several features and improvements. It has rolled out features like personalised chat themes, customised chat emoji and reactions, group profile photos, link previews, active status, and support for chat bubbles on Android. End-to-end encrypted chats received an extra layer of security and protection to protect the contents and calls of a chat from third-party access.

Facebook has been offering opt-in E2EE chat support for years, but the company has started expanding the ability to encrypt chats by default to more Messenger users. E2EE conversations can only be accessed by the sender and the receiver, and no third party, not even Facebook itself, can access the messages sent by users, according to the company.