Facebook Messenger for Android now supports SMS

Today Facebook Messenger for Android has received an additional feature - support for SMS. You'll be able to send and receive SMS text messages from the app, provided you first set it up as your default SMS app. This is easily done though, and once you turn the feature on your Facebook Messenger communications will remain blue, while SMS messages will show up in purple.

The point of this is for you to have to use one less app, at least that's what Facebook seems to think. If you move your SMS use into Messenger, then there's no reason for using another app dedicated to SMS communication.

SMS in Messenger supports text, video, images, audio, as well as emojis, stickers, and location sharing. Your SMS conversations will not be uploaded to Facebook servers, and all the messages are (obviously) sent through the traditional SMS/MMS channels from your carrier.

To set things up go to Settings (the person icon) in Facebook Messenger, tap on SMS in the list, and then turn on "Default SMS App". That's it.

The rollout of this feature might take a while to reach all Facebook Messenger users on Android. At this point it's unclear if you need a specific app version to access it or if it's more of a server-side switch.

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