Fb Messenger for Android is Dropping SMS Help

The Fb Messenger app for Android will quickly drop help for SMS messages. In a brand new help article (through 9to5Google), Meta introduced that Android customers who’ve been utilizing the SMS integration in Fb Messenger will lose this characteristic after September 28.

“If you happen to use Messenger as your default SMS messaging app on your Android system, please notice you’ll not be capable of use Messenger to ship and obtain SMS messages despatched by your mobile community once you replace your app after September 28, 2023.
You’ll nonetheless be capable of ship and obtain SMS messages by way of your mobile community and entry your SMS message historical past by way of your cellphone’s new default messaging app,” the corporate defined.

If Fb Messenger customers don’t decide up a brand new default SMS messaging app after the SMS integration goes away, textual content messages will find yourself in Google’s Android Messages app by default. This app gives help for RCS messaging, the brand new carrier-supported normal that gives fashionable messaging options reminiscent of high-res pictures, learn receipts, and extra, and it’s additionally safer than SMS. Nonetheless, Apple nonetheless doesn’t help RCS on iOS.

By providing SMS help in Fb Messenger, Meta tried to supply an all-in-one messaging expertise to Android customers. Nonetheless, most individuals with a smartphone in the present day juggle between totally different messaging apps, as inconvenient as that could be.

Again in October, the favored messaging app Sign additionally dropped SMS help from its Android app. As Sign gives end-to-end encryption by default, the corporate defined on the time that it not made sense to help SMS, a decades-old expertise that doesn’t supply any privateness or safety features.

Do you continue to use SMS messages in 2023? Pontificate within the feedback beneath.