Facebook is redesigning Messenger

Facebook is trying to clean up Messenger. The company showed off a new, redesigned version of the app, which is starting to roll out to users now.

The reason for the redesign is what many users have known for years: Messenger, in its current form, is a bloated confusing mess. 

Consider this: The current version of the app has nine — yes, nine — tabs.  I ignore most of these, so it’s easy to forget just how bloated Messenger has become in recent years, but there can’t possibly be a good reason for five different tabs that all show you slightly different lists of the same friends. 

“We built a lot of capabilities over the years but it’s not as simple as the app was in the beginning of our journey,” says Stan Chudnovsky, Facebook’s VP of Messenger.

The new version of Messenger will try to clean up some of that mess. Instead of nine tabs, there are just three: chats, people, and discover. (Incidentally, this design also makes Messenger look a bit more like Snapchat.) The chats tab is where you can manage your conversations, people is where you view your contact list, and discover is where you find messaging bots and instant games. 

But despite the slightly simpler design, Facebook isn’t removing any features from the app. Stories, which Facebook says has 300 million monthly users, are still featured prominently, even though the camera feature has been moved to the top of the app.

The company is also adding a few minor new features, like the ability to change the color of your chat bubbles to gradients, and a new dark mode. 

Given that most of the changes are relatively minor cosmetic tweaks, you’d be forgiven for questioning whether the “redesign” is actually significant enough to be labeled as such. (At a press event detailing the update, reporters pressed Facebook on the same question.) 

Though Chudnovsky disputed that the changes weren’t significant, calling it a “new foundational element,” he conceded they had a good reason to play it safe. That’s because the Messenger team is very aware that its users aren’t necessarily the biggest fans of big changes (and some people still haven’t forgiven Facebook for forcing the app on them to begin with).

“Changing the UI of something that 1.3 billion people use, that’s really hard to do without making a lot of people who are using your app really upset,” he said. “That’s why big redesigns generally don’t happen, or when they do, they don’t go well.”

That’s also why the update will be rolling out slowly to start. Though Facebook says the update will be launching today, it will take some time before everyone sees the changes in full.