What you need to know
- The Facebook Messenger app has gained a new dedicated tab for all of your calls.
- It allows you to keep track of all the calls you make or receive in one place.
- According to Meta, daily calls on the app now average 300 million every day.
Meta is teasing a major focus on audio and video calling on the Facebook Messenger app. The social media giant has introduced a new tab within Messenger dedicated to all of your calls.
The new “Calls” tab houses all of your audio and video calls in one location, making it easier to call friends with a few taps. It sits right next to the “Chats” tab in the Messenger app for Android and iOS (via TechCrunch (opens in new tab)). The tab displays every call you’ve made or received, including missed calls. The new tab displays audio and video call buttons, as well as a list of your contacts.
Messenger’s new tab follows in the footsteps of WhatsApp, consolidating all of your calls into a dedicated “Calls” tab. The feature has been in the app for quite some time in an effort to meet the needs of people who want to call family and friends without incurring hefty telco charges.
While it’s one of the best messaging apps for Android available today, Messenger lacked a way for users to easily keep track of their calls in a single hub, until now. Previously, you had to open a chat with a friend in order to access the call buttons.
The most recent change reflects Meta’s growing effort to position Messenger as both a messaging and a calling app. Its goal seems to be geared toward making it clearer for people who are unfamiliar with the service that the app not only lets you chat with friends but also allows you to call them.
Its launch coincides with the company’s announcement that Messenger has seen a 40% increase in the volume of daily calls made through the app since 2020. Meta says that more than 300 million audio and video calls are made on Messenger every day around the world.
The new tab is the latest change that Meta has made to Messenger. Earlier this year, the company launched split payments and longer voice messages on the app. A few months later, Messenger added a Slack-style shortcut that allows you to ping everyone in a group chat.
