Facebook Messenger for Mac Is Here (Sort Of)

It was almost a year ago that we first heard that Facebook was planning to bring its eponymous messaging service natively to the Mac, and now it looks like the company may finally be making good on that promise.

To be fair, the original “announcement” came from a short-lived blog post that suggested that Facebook wasn’t quite ready to go public with the idea last spring, but while the post was live, it did share that it expected to have a fully working Mac client for Facebook Messenger by the end of 2019 — a target that it very obviously didn’t manage to hit.

Now it looks like Facebook is doing a stealth release of the app on the Mac App Store, where it’s been spotted in France by MacGeneration, as well as in Australia, Mexico, and Poland, according to 9to5Mac.

While it was originally unclear if this was simply a staged rollout, it now seems that Facebook is still testing the app in smaller markets before unleashing it in the U.S., and it’s definitely not just a search limitation — if you’re in another country and follow a link to the Facebook Messenger app taken from the French or Mexican App Stores, you’ll be clearly told that it’s “not available in your country or region.”

A representative from Facebook told TechCrunch this “this is not yet a full launch” and that the company isn’t ready to share when the app will be available in other countries.

We’re conducting a small test of the Messenger app for macOS in a couple of markets. We don’t have a date when it will be available as we’re still gathering feedback from our users.

Facebook spokesperson

As 9to5Mac notes, what’s particularly interesting about Facebook’s new Messenger app is that it’s actually not the Mac Catalyst app that many had expected it to be. In other words, instead of porting the iPad version of Messenger over to the Mac, Facebook seems to have taken the same approach as popular work-based chat app Slack, using Electron to basically create a desktop version of the web-based Facebook Messenger.

Unfortunately, although having Messenger in a dedicated window with its own independent notifications will be a nice bonus, the use of Electron suggests that the Facebook Messenger for Mac may otherwise be very similar to the experience you get from visiting the service in your web browser.

Considering the improvements that Facebook has just made to its iOS apps, this is actually a bit disappointing, since it seems unlikely that Mac users are going to get this kind fo a speed boost or even a truly native macOS user experience. Then again, it may just be the first step in a bigger move, which also includes bringing WhatsApp and Instagram into the messaging fold, neither of which have any native Mac apps yet either. In fact, WhatsApp only came to the iPad last spring, and an iPad-native version of Instagram is not only MIA, but probably won’t be appearing anytime soon according to the company.

Still, we’ll have to wait and see exactly what Facebook has in store in the longer term. For now, it does appear that the app will offer “high-quality voice and video chat features” as well as the promised ability to make better use of a larger screen by letting users multitask while video chatting. There’s also going to be support for dark mode and more seamless file sharing features. However, the original announcement also suggested that it would feature a “virtual lounge” where friends could hang out online while sharing multiple videos from the main Facebook app, which doesn’t seem to have materialized quite yet.

At this point, you can check out the preview page for Messenger for Mac on the Australian Mac App Store to see some screenshots and a description of what it’s all about, but you won’t be able to download the app unless you have an App Store account in one of the countries where it’s available.