Facebook launches revamped message compose interface on Messenger

As part of today’s rollout of Facebook’s AI-powered personal assistant to all users in the United States, the social networking company mentioned that you should now start seeing a redesigned message compose interface within the mobile Messenger app. We first caught wind of this new iOS 10 Messages-style chat experience two months ago.

At the time, Facebook was still testing the redesign with a small percentage of users. The new way to compose messages is currently rolling out to Messenger users across the globe so check back in a few days if it’s currently unavailable to you.

“This update offers an easier way to access and discover Messenger features like our rich visual messaging tools and the ability to quickly share content like video and images directly from the text composer with a long press,” says Facebook.

The revamped chat composer moves the plus button along with the camera, media picker and voice messaging icons to the leftmost side. While the text field itself is now narrower than before, it expands when tapped while at the same time automatically hiding all the controls behind the arrow icon.

This is reminiscent of iOS 10’s Messages app.

Moreover, the emoji button is now located inside the text field, at the rightmost side for quick access. Tapping it brings up a slightly reworked emoji picker with three dedicated tabs for switching between browsing Messenger stickers, GIFs and emoji.

Tapping the plus button at the leftmost side brings up a new panel with shortcuts to additional actions like Location, Set Event Reminder (previously available via Messenger’s dedicated apps browser), Video Clip and More.

Lastly, tapping the More button reveals additional Messenger features such as Games, Payments, Share Location and Rides.

Facebook announced this morning that its AI-driven personal assistant is now available to all Messenger users in the U.S. Now fully automated, M interjects in your chat threads to offer you suggestions related to the conversation at hand, including actions like hailing a Lyft or Uber, paying or requesting money, sending stickers and more.

Grab Facebook Messenger at no charge from App Store.

Source: Facebook