Facebook plans on forcing users to chat through Messenger app

Screenshot by Nick Statt/CNET

Facebook is so intent on pumping up usage of its standalone Messenger app that it plans to kill off the chatting feature for its main Facebook app, keeping the messages button intact but automatically sending users out to Messenger when it's tapped.

The company began notifying select European users of its main Facebook app that in two weeks time, messaging will be disabled and users will be prompted to download Messenger if they have not already. The company confirmed that this is not a test and will soon begin rolling out worldwide, The Verge reports.

Android phones with particularly low memory will be exempted, as will Windows Phone and tablet users for the time being. Facebook Paper, the company's new news-focused redesign, will also keep in-app messaging.

While it sounds overtly forceful to push users out of one its app and onto another, Facebook has already gone to great lengths to drive up usage of its increasingly robust mobile app family. Even now, if users have Messenger installed on iOS, Facebook's main app will already kick them over to it when they want to chat with friends. The only difference with the upcoming change is that users will be forced to download Messenger.

The process of moving from one app to the next, while still not ideal if one wants to minimize the presence of Facebook on their smartphone, is relatively smooth and quick. On iOS, the Messenger interface happens to include a blue banner that, when tapped, switches users back to the main Facebook app. On Android, this is not the case, nor does Facebook's main app force Android users to open up Messenger even if they have it installed. It's unclear at the moment whether or not Facebook's Messenger changes will be same across iOS and Android.

Screenshots by Nick Statt/CNET

For the time being, Facebook still lets you message friends within its main app using its nicely designed Chat h heads feature. The update to Facebook messaging, which rolled out to the social network's main apps last year with the launch of its Android skin Facebook Home, collected your messages into a circular moveable bubble of your friends' faces that can be expanded to talk or thrown down to the bottom of the screen to close it out.

Interestingly enough, though Chat heads works for all SMS and Facebook chatting on Android smartphones even on one's home screen and within other apps -- though it's also unclear what will happen once Messenger takes over -- the feature was only able to function with the main Facebook app due to Apple's mobile operative system restrictions. Now, with Messenger being pushed as the de facto chatting client, it seems as if Chat heads for iOS will disappear completely.

CNET has reached out to Facebook to confirm the fate of Chat heads on iOS and Android and whether or not this Messenger update will be different across the two operative systems, and will update this post when we hear back.