Meta Is Bringing Messenger Back To The Facebook App

About a decade ago, Facebook (before it was Meta) made the controversial decision to extricate Messenger from the Facebook app. If you wanted to continue using Messenger on a phone, you had to download the standalone Messenger app. As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained at the time, "each app can only focus on doing one thing well."

Now, nearly ten years and a name change later, Meta appears to be reversing course. In a blog post about the future of Facebook, Tom Alison, Head of Facebook, revealed that the company is currently "testing the ability for people to access their Messenger inbox within the Facebook app," and noted that testing will expand to even more users soon.

"Over the coming year, we'll build more ways to integrate messaging features in Facebook," wrote Alison. "Ultimately, we want it to be easy and convenient for people to connect and share, whether in the Messenger app or directly within Facebook."

The Verge actually reported on the plan last June, and then in December, social media consultant Matt Navarra shared screenshots of the new feature on Twitter:

Facebook is bringing Messenger chat features back in-app

In 2014, Facebook turned off in-app chat features and launched Messenger as a separate app.

But in-app chat features are coming back.

This is what it looks like: https://t.co/IyJS4bWggm pic.twitter.com/aJ5dLheXKS

— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) December 30, 2022

Meta didn't share any information about when we can expect in-app chat to be available to the general public. Presumably, since the company is now comfortable discussing it publicly, it won't be long before more of us have access to Messenger in the Facebook app.