Despite people"s feelings for Meta and Facebook, Messenger is still used by millions of consumers around the world in order to keep in touch with loved ones and to reach out to businesses. Meta continually updates Messenger in order to add new features and improve performance in general. Now, it has announced a bunch of capabilities for the messaging platform.
First up is Split Payments, which are now available to use on Android and iOS devices, but only if you"re in the U.S. As the name suggests, Split Payments are a way of splitting a full payment into two or more transactions across different people to settle the overall cost. To use Split Payments, select the "+" icon on your group chat, navigate to the payments tabs, and hit the "Get started" button. From here on you can either split your bill evenly across group members or customize it according to your agreement. You can then send a personalized message and confirm the details of the transaction.
Coming over to audio features, Messenger has two new audio capabilities. The first adds controls so that you can delete, pause, or preview your voice recordings before you send them. The other bumps the maximum duration of voice recordings from 1 minute to 30 minutes.
Finally, Vanish Mode allows you to send content that automatically disappears after it has been seen once. You can enable Vanish Mode by navigating to a chat thread, swiping up, and sending your disappearing message. You can then return to your regular chat mode by swiping up once again.
All three features are now rolling out. Split Payments are only available to those in the U.S. while new audio capabilities and Vanish Mode are being made available globally.