How To Use Facebook’s New ‘Messenger Rooms’

If you use Facebook or Facebook Messenger, you’ve probably seen notifications prompting you to try out the new “Messenger Rooms” feature. Messenger Rooms are basically a free and simpler alternative to video chat apps like Zoom, Teams or Google Meet. Instead of being a separate product, they’re integrated directly into Facebook Messenger. Each room supports up to 50 users at once.

Many of us have been working and socialising remotely, and Messenger Rooms provide yet another way to connect with each other via our phones and computers—but without some of the excess you’ll find in other video conferencing apps.

How to start a new Messenger Room

On iOS/Android

1. Open the Messenger app

2. Tap the “People” tab

3. Tap “Create a Room.”

4. To invite others, tap “Share link” and select the contacts you want to share the Room link with. You can also specify if you want anyone with the link to be able to join your room—no Facebook account required—or whether you’d like to limit your room to Facebook users only.

On desktop

• Open Messenger on via Facebook’s site (or messenger.com)

• Click the “Start New Room” camera icon at the top of left-hand menu.

• A new window will pop up. Click “Continue as [you]” to start a room.

• To invite others, copy, paste, and send the URL at the top of the Room window to anyone you want to invite.

How to join a Room in Messenger

Joining a room is the same in the mobile app or on desktop. Simply tap or click the invite link to open the room, then click “Join as [username].” (You can only be in one Messenger Room at a time.) Rooms are invite-only, but remember that anyone can join a room as long as they have the link—you can’t limit rooms to a subset of your friends (or any specific friend lists).

Messenger’s Room controls are simple to navigate once you’re in. The on-screen buttons include:

• Mic mute on/off

• Camera on/off

• Swap to all-participants view

• A red “Hang Up” bubble. Desktop users can also close the browser window to end the call if they want.

If you’re the host of a messenger room, you can tap the participants icon on the app or desktop versions of your chat to lock the room—preventing anyone else from joining if they happen to have access to your link. You can also end the chat at any point and boot everyone out of your room.

On the desktop version of Messenger Rooms, there’s also a settings menu that offers few audio/video options to mess with if you need to fix your mic or camera, as well as a button that enables screen-sharing mode (absent on the app-based version). On the app-based messenger rooms, meanwhile, you can tap a button in the lower-left corner to take a quick picture of your gigantic hangout—er, room.