Facebook's messaging app remains free and full of features like disappearing chats and shared albums, but Meta AI is now folded into the same app whether you want a chatbot or not.
3.6 / 5
Messenger is Meta's free chat app for text, voice and video calls, built on top of Facebook's social graph. The developer's pitch is that you can find and message anyone on Facebook or Messenger without needing their phone number, which is the app's main reason to exist over a plain SMS or carrier-based messenger.
Beyond one-to-one chat it covers group albums for photos and videos, QR codes for adding people you meet in person, and file sharing up to 100MB for documents like Word or PDF files. It also carries Stories and a newer 'Notes' feature for 24-hour disappearing updates, plus broadcast channels for following creators, so it functions as a light social feed alongside the messaging.
For most people the decision comes down to three things: message editing (the developer says you can edit a sent message for up to 15 minutes), disappearing messages on end-to-end encrypted chats, and the ability to send large files directly in a thread. Those are genuinely useful day-to-day tools that plenty of messaging apps still lack.
The bigger change on this listing is Meta AI, described as a built-in assistant for answering questions, giving advice, helping with homework, and generating or editing images. The developer notes it's only available in select languages and countries, so it won't be available to everyone who installs the app, but for those who get it, it's now part of the same interface as your conversations rather than a separate opt-in tool.
Nothing about this app is paywalled: it's free, and the developer doesn't mention subscriptions or in-app purchases anywhere in the listing. The catch is structural rather than financial. Using Messenger properly still means having a Facebook account or a Meta-linked identity, which means your contacts, chats and presence live inside Meta's ecosystem rather than a neutral messaging service.
It's also stopped being just a messenger. Themes, stickers, GIFs, Stories, Notes and creator channels are all bundled in, and now Meta AI sits alongside them. If someone wants a lean app that only sends texts and calls, this isn't it: the feature list has grown well past that brief.
As a free way to reach almost anyone without swapping phone numbers, Messenger still does the job, and features like editable messages, disappearing chats and generous file sharing are legitimately handy. But the app keeps absorbing more of Meta's product line, from Stories to Meta AI, and none of it can be switched off if a user just wants to send a text. Anyone happy inside Meta's world will find this a capable, well-stocked app; anyone looking for a simple, focused messenger should look elsewhere, such as WhatsApp, which the same company also runs with a narrower focus.
Senior reviews editor ·
Messenger
com.facebook.orca
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