Facebook Is Forcing Android Users To Download The Messenger App

It's been roughly two years since Facebook decided to strip the chat functionality from their smartphone app. Instead of letting users just download a single app for all of their Facebooking tasks, the company forced users to install a new app to chat, called Messenger. Of course, you could get around that by choosing to go to the mobile Facebook page and chatting there. But even that is coming to an end.

There are a lot of reasons why users might not want to install Facebook's Messenger app. It can be a drain on your battery, and it requests permissions for things like your microphone, which makes some people uneasy. Unfortunately, the company is trying their hardest to make sure that's your only option for using their chat service on your phone.

Android users are already getting notifications saying "Soon you'll only be able to view your messages from Messenger." And we've gotten reports that some Android users are already completely unable to send messages through the chat function. When they try to open a conversation, they're being directed to the Messenger listing on the Google Play Store.

Currently, iOS users still seem to be able to send messages through the mobile site, but it's only a matter of time before they're given the same treatment. There are currently only a couple of workarounds for this issue. You can either browse the desktop version of the site on your phone, or use a third-party app like Trillian to handle your messages.