Meta to retire messenger desktop app and messenger.com in April 2026
dzrh.com.ph49 points by SoKamil 2 hours ago
49 points by SoKamil 2 hours ago
I remember using Pidgin in ~2009. A dozen chat networks, all on one app. Desktop software built with a native GUI toolkit. And, on top of all that: you could keep your chat logs forever. The world of yesterday.
I remember I had a plugin that let you change your profile picture each <x> time. And I seem to recall with ubuntu's notify-osd you could reply to your incoming messages from within the notification itself. I loved using Pidgin.
"Modern" mainstream IM is completely misserable. I hate having to use one-app-per-each-protocol for the sake of "security" and "features".
There was a plugin called "Off The Record" (OTR) which would do a pk exhange and then send cipher text over the channel. It was rad. You could have e2ee over Facebook Messenger. When you opened the chat in the Facebook web ui, all you could see was the cipher-text.
Then Facebook started blocking 3rd party clients and Pidgin et-al slowly faded away.
Pidgin is still being maintained/developed, one of the devs actively streams on twitch too IIRC.
Theoretically there is regulation now that should allow an app like this again here in the EU.
Currently it is in the "malicious compliance" phase.
And me using Adium on Mac ~2006. Of course rose-tinted glasses and everything, but it was a great experience.
It's not rose-tinted glasses. Aside from cross-device continuous chats (which weren't really relevant at the time) and maybe being harder to send pics (can't recall), Adium was a far better messaging experience than anything modern. You could theme it however you wanted, you had full control, and it was actually smooth and not clunky.
I used Miranda. Beautiful app with lots of plugins, and lot of settings and themes to customize it for yourself.
You can still use Beeper[0] and similar. The key issue with this type of application is that some networks have put more resources to detecting them and gotten more hostile to users of it - mostly those who tie ad revenue directly to messaging (although officially it's to avoid spam + detect compromised accounts).
I was surprised to see that Beeper actually has support for ‘local bridges’ that connect to services on-device (which reduces the risk of bans and removes Beeper as the middleman).
I was unsurprised to see that (at least with the local Instagram bridge), Beeper is extremely inconsistent with push notifications and sometimes has messages missing in the chat.
I had that experience on my phone (Nokia n900) all of them went through the messages app.
I miss it.
I'm one of those edge cases who uses Messenger.com a lot.
My facebook account is deactivated but I can keep on messaging. But... facebook.com/messages requires you to log in to your facebook account (which reactivates it).
So Mobile app would be my only option. Right now a lot of family members use Messenger, so it's not trivial to move away entirely.
Why not install just the Messenger app? I never install Facebook app, but I keep Messenger app to chat with my college peeps.
I think some in your situation will reactivate Facebook, which must be part of the decision to stop messenger.com.
It's not a good solution, but you can use a mobile emulator on your desktop and use the mobile app there...
I wish we went back to communication protocols, and allowed people to bring their clients. mIRC was my favourite era of async communication, now it's all just a giant spaghetti of apps.
> The Messenger desktop app for macOS and Windows had already been discontinued in December 2025, with Meta removing the apps from official stores and encouraging users to transition to web‑based messaging well before April 2026. This policy change reflects a broader strategic shift by Meta toward browser‑based and mobile messaging, rather than maintaining separate native desktop clients, which historically saw less usage compared to mobile versions.
interesting. do we see this move with coding agents as well? we're also seeing kind of the opposite move of the chat AI apps from web/terminal -> TO desktop apps
for coding apps, I can see some silos happening, but I don't suspect it is realistic. For example, I'm vibing a mobile app and the binary is huge. I suspect there are too many use cases that will keep gravity towards the local machine. I also suspect that developers will not be tolerant to full remote dev environments.
It looks like https://www.facebook.com/messages is effectively the same thing.
yeah but messenger.com was nice if you've blocked the facebook.com domain to try to use less social media.
The blast radius is more corporate and school networks that block facebook.com
how many people willing to update their hosts file to redirect internally so that you are still able to avoid typing facebook.com? If someone was willing to block the domain, I'm guessing a high percentage of those would be amenable.
this move has really made me think about moving away from messenger, i hate the website version and only use desktop app outside of phone app
They really are forcing me to visit facebook.com in 2026 aren’t they? Guess I’ll stop using FB messenger when I’m on a computer.
Which one lets them hoover up more data? Probably the desktop app.
Which one lets them display more ads? Probably the site.
For my money, I've always felt like they've tried to force me to use their messenger app on my phone. A while back, desktop/web started asking for a PIN to restore messages. It doesn't always prompt, and sometimes messages are there which you'd think shouldn't be, based on the description of E2EE and the role the PIN plays in it. I did not set any PIN, so I of course don't know it. Resetting the PIN deletes my entire message history.
Which one lets them close off security loopholes scam farms use to automate scam messages and accounts? Probably getting rid of web and desktop.
$1.62bn market cap
Didn't they kill the Mac desktop app last year?
I think META like many other "service providers" don't yet realize, that it's becoming trivial to roll your own and all we need is a protocol. And arguably there are many. You can then use your existing social graph (anyone remembers this term? lol) to chat. Your mom and granddad won't roll their own, but publishing an open service that uses FB openID and API while delegating to the open protocol is really not that hard. Browser local storage may not be ideal, but it's a good placeholder until something better can be implemented.
It's not the technology design that's that important. It's the network effect, and peoples' default trust in megacorps over volunteer projects. Both of which cannot be solved with just a protocol.
This would be a natural role for the Post Office to take on, to provide a neutral ad-free, privacy-respecting messaging platform accessible to all.
It's funny to see this all go full circle. messenger.com was spun out of facebook.com to try to build a new platform. They promised interoperability with Instagram and WhatsApp accounts, although they never did a good enough job that you could just use one account across them.
Facebook really could have been the default online identity provider if they weren't such an abhorrently shitty company. In the early days, you wouldn't even ask for someone's number - you'd just chat on Facebook.
I’m honestly incredibly surprised they would get rid of the desktop app just as desktop messaging apps have become their most important.
The future Meta AI would have seemingly fit rightly in there.
Source, earlier: https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/804132271957789 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47042390)
I guess you just goto: https://www.facebook.com/messages/
Not much difference.
Does that work on mobile? It always prompts me to install Messenger.
My workaround here is/was:
- Install browser that lets you run plugins
- Change user-agent to a desktop browser - any will do
- (optional) run social fixer while you're at it
I completely understand that iOS probably won't let you do this. I've been doing this on Android and Firefox, and the web experience on a phone is... functional. Since it thinks its a desktop, the page layout doesn't always gracefully fit into a portrait form-factor. Landscape mode helps in those cases.
Yeah, my workaround is just going to the desktop version of Facebook when I absolutely must use it on my phone (usually marketplace-related.)
they deny you access until you give them access...
fsck them! i blocked my fb account and not looking back. once it was a place to find and discuss with interesting people... but now it's just a cesspool of filtered irrelevance and propaganda.
[dead]
Mark Zuckerberg is a vile sociopath, I think the historical evidence long supports it