We’ve talked about the benefits of Facebook Messenger, but if you’re still not convinced, The Guardian shows off a handy little trick to access your messages in the iPhone Facebook app without installing the Messenger app.
The approach here is pretty simple:
- Head into the Facebook app and tap the Messages tab
- Tap the Install Messenger button
- When your phone switches over to the App Store, tap download, then immediately hit the stop button. This cancels the download
- Go back to the Facebook app and enjoy your messages.
That’s it. The trick works perfectly for now, but don’t be surprised if Facebook patches it in the future. If nothing else, at least it will give you a little extra time before you need to download the app.
An iPhone trick to avoid Facebook Messenger and keep chatting [The Guardian]
Comments
7 responses to “How To Access Facebook Messages On iOS Without Facebook Messenger”
you don’t even need to start to install the app, just going to the app store was enough for me.
does this work on android by any chance? i have resorted to using the web browser instead of downloading the big brother-esque chat app, but i have noticed my mobile fb usage declining… perhaps this is a good thing.
Some folks in another article about this claimed it worked on their Android phones, but it didn’t work for me on my Xperia Z1 running 4.4.3
I genuinely like having the separate messages app on my android, especially with chatheads being so usefully overlaid on everything (if I tell it to). The only thing I lament is not being able to integrate sms into it like I used to.
BUT. On my iPad I hate it. So I’m doing this trick.
Just install the app already, it’s not going to kill you.
I installed the app. Now I’m dead.
After I “upgraded” to version 11.0 (the one where they moved “most recent” into the bottom of the pits of hell) I was ready to give up the FB app, luckily I had the old version 10.0 on my computer so I deleted it off my phone and copied it from the PC. Thankfully messaging still works from that version so no need for messenger for me!