Since 2014, if you’ve wanted to use the functions of Facebook’s messaging features on your Android smartphone, you’ve had to download the Messenger app, which is totally separate from the regular Facebook app.
While there are certainly benefits to this (using Messenger without downloading the Facebook app being one of them) it doesn’t make much sense overall. Now, however, it appears Facebook might be bringing the core messaging functions of Facebook back into the regular Facebook app.
Code investigator Jane Manchun Wong discovered hints of this potentially-upcoming change. In a tweet on the matter, she points to the change as being a part of the company’s strategy of eventually bringing together all its chat apps under one roof (Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger).
In a later tweet, Wong elaborates that the chat features that could eventually appear in the Facebook app will not have all the functionality of the full Messenger app. While you’ll be able to chat with Facebook friends using text, you’ll still need the main Messenger app for other things like phone calls, video chats, sending photos, posting reactions, etc.
However, this could change down the road. It’s totally possible Facebook will start small and then eventually bring over all the functions of Messenger, but we don’t know yet.