Official Facebook Windows 8.1 app now in Windows Store

It's been a long time in coming but today heavy Facebook users who will also be using Windows 8.1 will be able to download an official app alongside the Windows 8.1 launch. Earlier this morning, people who have the RTM version of the OS update, such as our fearless leader Steven Parker, reported they were able to download the app from the Windows Store. It's likely that everyone else who is waiting for the official launch of Windows 8.1 later today will be able to do the same thing.

An official Facebook app made for the Modern UI has been something that many Windows 8 users have been awaiting since the launch of the OS. There have been a ton of third party Facebook apps that have been released in order to meet the demand for such a program. In June Microsoft confirmed that an official Facebook app was indeed in the works but would not offer a launch data at that time. A few weeks ago, an official Microsoft Spain Twitter feed seemed to confirm that the Facebook app would launch at the same time as the Windows 8.1 update but that post was quickly deleted.

The official description on the Windows Store page doesn't offer much in terms of what features are in the new Facebook app. It does say that any updates will appear on the Windows 8.1 Start screen but that appears to be the only feature that's unique to the app compared to other official Facebook clients.

This is the 'official' one, among a bunch of other 'fake' Facebook apps.

What we do know is that it might not be easy to find due to fragmentation of the Windows Store, showing a lot of unofficial apps. We've screenshot the listing above, which might already be available to you.

Check out the gallery for other pics, what we found is that allowing Facebook to run in the background caused an alert that there were "too many apps running in the background" and I had to disable one to allow Facebook to keep running in the background.

Account Settings in the charm settings panel opens in the web browser, and interestingly the app looks just like the official Microsoft one for Windows Phone 8 when snapped.