Facebook Messenger Update Allows Users To Turn One-On-One Calls Into Group Calls

Facebook has now made it easier to add more people to group calls in the Messenger app. Starting today, users on iOS and Android devices will be able to easily turn a regular one-on-one Facebook Messenger video call into a group call.

When a user is in a video chat or on a voice call, the user will simply have to tap the screen to bring up extra options. The new “add person” icon will be located at the right. Tapping on that icon will bring up the user’s other Messenger contacts. To add a person to the group call or a video chat, users will simply have to tap the “Ring” button to invite them to join the same group call or video chat.

Previously, to turn a one-on-one video or audio chat into a group chat, users would have to end the call and start an entirely new group chat. With this added new feature, users will easily be able to turn a one-on-one chat into a group chat without interruption.

“With the ability to add more people seamlessly to your calls, you can continue your conversation in the moment, just like if you were together in real life,” Facebook said on its post. “Never again worry about skipping a beat when sharing your BFF’s spontaneous karaoke performance on Messenger. Sharing moments like these is now a few quick taps away.”

This improvement to video and audio chats may be part of Facebook’s promise to further simplify the Messenger experience, as pointed out by Engadget. “Over the last two years, we built a lot of capabilities to find the features that continue to set us apart. A lot of them have found their product market fit; some haven’t,” Facebook Messenger lead David Marcus said last month. “While we raced to build these new features, the app became too cluttered. Expect to see us invest in massively simplifying and streamlining Messenger this year.”

Although this improvement may not seem like a pretty big deal to a lot of users, it does help Messenger compete better with the likes of Skype, Google Hangouts and Line, as pointed out by TechCrunch.

This new Facebook Messenger feature is now available to all iOS and Android users. If the feature is still unavailable, users should make sure that they’ve updated the Messenger app to its latest version.