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Tag: messenger

  • Facebook could combine two important parts

    Facebook could combine two important parts

    Facebook is split into so many products these days that it’s hard to keep track to everything the social app has to offer if you’re not a hardcore user. News Feed, Stories, Messenger are just some of the features that Facebook has made available to users throughout the years.

    The reason Facebook split its app into so many pieces is quite simple: monetization. Well, it appears that the social giant has found a way to make even more money by combining, rather than dividing, two of these features: News Feed and Stories.

    The changes spotted by software engineer Jane Manchun Wong indicates that Facebook is testing a new format that will combine News Feed and Stories into a one swipeable, hybrid carousel.

    It will allow standard feed posts and ads to be placed inside Stories in the same carousel so that users would be tempted to swipe through them more often than not, which translates in more views and better monetization of content.

    The GIF posted by Jane shows how a user seamlessly switches between a News Feed story and a Stories video, inside the hybrid carousel. The feature has been discovered in the Android version of Facebook, but if the company does indeed plan to make it available, it will be present on all supported platforms.

  • Facebook Messenger dark mode now Available

    Facebook Messenger dark mode now Available

    Facebook has been widely testing Messenger’s dark mode for about a month now, and while the feature might have been available for everyone, you couldn’t enable it from the settings menu.

    The only way to enable dark mode in Messenger was to send a crescent moon emoji in any chat, an Easter Egg activation available on both Android and iOS platforms.

    Starting today, Facebook is making it easier for everyone to enable and disable the dark mode in Messenger by adding a toggle in the Settings menu. To activate the feature, simply tap your profile photo in Messenger to access settings and toggle dark mode to switch the chat from white to dark.

    According to Facebook, the new dark mode for Messenger should provide lower brightness while maintaining the same contrast and vibrancy. The new feature should also remove the glare from the phone for use in low light situations, which should allow users to take advantage of Messenger regardless of where they are.

    Facebook mentions that the dark mode is already available globally in Messenger settings, although some users may have to wait a few more days for the new feature to arrive.

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  • Android users should now have a better performing Snapchat

    Android users should now have a better performing Snapchat

    Snapchat disseminated a tweet today announcing that it has released its new Android app. The app was rebuilt from the ground up so that it could be faster for Android users. In rebuilding its Android app, Snapchat had to take into consideration the many different cameras and chipsets used on various Android handsets. The decision made to revamp Snapchat’s Android app came in 2017 when it became clear that the messaging app’s iOS version was superior.

    In early 2018, Snapchat staff realized that the Android app was always trying to run code in the background, leading it to act laggy. Thus, the decision was made to rebuild the Android app from scratch. The challenge facing Snap’s director of engineering, Gustavo Moura, was how to make the messaging app run the same on flagship Android devices and lower-end models alike. Eventually, the Snapchat development team was able to get it done and the app’s Android subscribers should see Snapchat run faster once the new version is installed. In addition, better performance should be seen on lower-end phones. To make sure that updates are running bug-free now and in the future, Snapchat is testing them on a larger number of Android-powered devices.

    “Android devices don’t all behave the exact same way, right? It’s very easy for us to build an Android app that will work well on flagship devices like the Pixel 3. It’s more challenging when you have to capture the whole ecosystem, especially when the camera works very differently from manufacturer to manufacturer.”- Gustavo Moura, Director of Engineering, Snapchat.

    Those installing the updated Snapchat app on their Android device won’t notice any changes to the UI. Instead, Snapchat concentrated on improving things under the hood so that the Android app could run as fast as its iOS app. And while the new version of Snapchat for Android has begun rolling out to some now, it won’t be fully available until the end of this year.

    Originally known for its self-destructing messages that would automatically delete after ten seconds, Snapchat developed the Stories feature in 2013. Users can post a series of images that remain on Snapchat for 24 hours to help them convey a story. In addition, the popular Snapchat Lenses feature uses AR to help add cartoonish features to a member’s selfie.

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  • WhatsApp is now rolling out a renewed privacy feature

    WhatsApp is now rolling out a renewed privacy feature

    Groups are a vital part of WhatsApp, although as the Facebook-owned messaging platform has grown in popularity so has the number of unwanted group chats. But today, after testing them for a while on iOS, WhatsApp is rolling out new privacy settings which should help control this.

    Until now, group admins could add any WhatsApp user to a group without needing their consent – the only requirement being that the user is a contact in the admin’s phone. As part of this latest rollout, though, WhatsApp users will now be able to choose which people can add them to groups.

    In order to access the new feature, users need to simply head over to the Settings menu within WhatsApp and tap Accounts. Then a quick tap on Privacy and later Groups will present users with the choice of three options: ‘Everyone,’ ‘My Contacts,’ or ‘Nobody.’ Each one is pretty self-explanatory with ‘Nobody’ meaning users will have to approve every single group with ‘Everyone’ allows users to leave their group invitations completely open, as they are today.

    WhatsApp’s latest privacy feature will begin rollout out today to a select number of users before expanding globally across the coming weeks.

  • How to open links in external browser with Facebook Messenger

    How to open links in external browser with Facebook Messenger

    For a while now, both the Facebook and Messenger app have been opening links in their own, internal browser — a simple webview window, which doesn’t support multiple tabs and is there to allow you to quickly interact with something on the web, and even allow said item to communicate back to your Facebook app instantly.

    That said, a lot of people find the internal browser annoying. Why? Well, sometimes you just tap on a YouTube video only to be greeted by a webview window, which opens a desktop version of the YouTube site that you are not even logged into. Lame. Sometimes, you want to open a web page in your Chrome or Safari browser so that it can stay there as an open tab. Other times, you get so into the information you are reading about that you want to quickly open a few more tabs on it and do a deeper research… oops, you can’t — you are not in your browser of choice, you are in Facebook’s webview.

    Needless to say, many users out there would prefer it if their links simply open in a default app of choice — if it’s a YouTube link, just have it open the video in the YouTube app; if it’s a web link, just launch it in Chrome or Safari.

    Well, there’s a solution for that problem… if you are on Android. That’s right, for some odd reason, Facebook does not allow iPhone users to opt out of using its internal browser. If you are on iOS, you are forced to manually swap apps, though it’s not as slow or painful as it may sound.

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