As a reminder, we offer these basic how-to guides for our readers who are not necessarily as tech savvy as others claim to be. We know that many of you have been using Messages to chat with Facebook friends for years and you don’t need a tutorial. This article is for readers who don’t necessarily know about the feature, and we know there are some of them out there. If you already know how to connect Facebook to Messages, don’t feel bad about skipping this article. It won’t hurt our feelings.
Apple’s chat client, Messages, showed up on the Mac in 2012 when the company launched Mountain Lion. If you don’t already know about Messages on the Mac, you are in for a treat. It makes it possible for you to connect with a variety of sources to chat seamlessly with other OS X or iOS users, plus you can connect to your Google, Yahoo, and AOL accounts to communicate without having to log onto their websites. Although not as well known, Messages makes it possible for you to add even more third-party chat clients through the instant messaging service Jabber. That is how we are going to connect to Facebook.
Step 1: Open Messages and select “Add Account” from the dropdown menu in the upper left corner of your Mac.
Step 2: Select “Other messages account…” from the available options and click “Continue.”
Step 3: Select Jabber from the dropdown menu under “Account Type.”
Step 4: Enter your Facebook user name with @chat.facebook.com as the suffix. For example, if your Facebook username is Joe Everyman, your chat username will be joe.everyman@chat.facebook.com.
Step 5: Enter your Facebook account password.
Step 6: Enter chat.facebook.com in the server options section for “Server.”
Step 7: Enter 5222 for the Port number.
Step 8: Click the “Create” button.
Now your Facebook conversations have been added to Messages. Every time someone on Facebook says hello, you will be notified as if it were one of your Messages chats on OS X.