Engineers in Meta won’t be proud of the latest bug introduced into the web version of the popular platform. It causes Messenger chat windows to be stuck on your screen no matter how hard you press the ‘X’ button at the upper right corner of the window.
In the past couple of days, the unexpected error caught thousands of users worldwide off guard, wondering what happened and how to fix it.
The bad news is that there is no technical fix. We just have to wait until Meta sorts it out on their end – and we even heard the first reports from users being able to close their chats again. But if the issue still persists, you are not left entirely powerless. Not at all.
The temporary workaround lies in the controls that Facebook’s user interface already offers since pressing the ‘x’ button is only one of three ways how to close a chat window.
By far, the easiest backup solution is to use your keyboard. First, move your cursor and click on the chat window to highlight it – either the top of it, conversation bubbles, or text bar – then simply press the Escape button on the keyboard.
The second solution is a hidden one, kind of. There is an ever-present floating grey button at the bottom right corner of the screen. It allows you to open a blank chat window and start a conversation with the chosen person.
When one or more chat windows are open, it serves one more inconspicuous purpose. When you put the cursor in the proximity of the button, an additional button with three dots appears. It offers you two options: “Close all chats” or “Minimize open chats.”
The first option is pretty straightforward. The second option will collapse the windows into chat bubbles that can be closed one by one. These options are especially useful if you have opened too many chat windows and now you can’t get rid of them because of the bug.
That’s it, very simple. And even if Meta fixes the bug today or tomorrow, it is good to know about this. You never know when some silly piece of code will find its way to Facebook once again.