If you have Facebook Messenger for Android, you will from today be able to send and receive SMS messages directly from the app. This was announced by Facebook yesterday and is quite convenient for users as there is no need to move away from the Messenger app whenever you get a text message.
This is not the first time Facebook is introducing this feature on Messenger, it was available a while back but was removed a few weeks after that. The company said that people were not using the feature and that is why it was removed. It seems like Facebook has decided to reintroduce this feature.
This feature is available to Facebook for Android at the moment. To enable this, you have to open the Messenger app and tap on “settings.” The settings page is the icon at the top right section that looks like a person. When there, choose the SMS option and turn on the “Default SMS app.” This means that Messenger will be your default messaging app from this point forward.
Your text messages and Messenger conversations can be differentiated easily based on color. SMS/text messages will be in purple while your Messenger chats will be in blue. With this, you will always know which message is which. Since turning on this feature makes the app your default messaging app, sending normal text messages does not require an active internet connection and regular text fees apply. Sending non-SMS messages will still use your data.
According to Facebook, Messenger now supports SMS messages with text, images, audio, video, emojis, location sharing and stickers. For any other features such as sending GIFs or making voice/video calls, you will have to use a regular Messenger chat.
As mentioned above, this feature is available on Messenger for Android but you can send text message to any other user using any other platform. Facebook hasn’t said when the other platforms will be getting this feature but my guess is that it will be happening soon.
Read: Facebook to Introduce End-to-End Encryption to Its Messenger App
