Statistically speaking, there’s a pretty good chance you’re one of the 1.2 billion people who use Facebook Messenger
at least once a month. Anecdotally, there’s a decent chance you harbor
deep resentments toward its sluggishness, its bloat, and its liberally
borrowed Snapchat features. Friends, there’s a better way. It’s called
Messenger Lite.
You
may have heard of Messenger Lite already, and if you live outside of
the US, UK, Canada, or Ireland, you may already be using it. Facebook
first launched Lite a year ago, intending it for markets whose fickle or
low-bandwidth internet connections would collapse under the weight of
the full-fledged Messenger platform. This week, Lite launched for those
four more developed markets as well. And guess what? You should switch
over to it immediately.
That directive comes
with a couple of caveats: If you have an iPhone, this does not apply to
you. Sorry! Facebook only released Messenger Lite on Android, with no
signs of an iOS version in the offing. Secondly, if you are for some
reason heavily invested in the Facebook Messenger games ecosystem, which
I know must exist because there is a game controller tab in the
Messenger app every time I open it, you should stick with the
full-fledged version. Also, Lite doesn't support Secret Conversations, Facebook's end-to-end encrypted chat, but hey, that's what Signal's for anyway.
And that’s it! Everyone else: Let’s explore why Lite is absolutely right for you.
Lite As a Feather
It’s easier to focus on what Lite does have than what it doesn’t, because the list is so short. When you open Lite up, you get three gloriously straightforward tabs: Home, which shows your existing chats. Contacts, which, you know, and Profile,
where you can adjust your notification settings, look at your message
requests, switch accounts, report any issues, and that’s pretty much it.
No,
really, that’s all! There’s no funhouse mirror room of tabs within tabs
like you find in Messenger, in which opening the app presents you with,
by my count, 10 tappable options (not including your recent
conversations): Home, Contacts, Camera, Games, and Bots tabs, a Compose bubble, a Profile icon, and the option to sort chats by Messages, Active, Groups, and Calls.
I
got tired just counting those, much less navigating them. And it never
stops. Open a composition window in Messenger and you get options for
your camera, for images, for voice dictation, for emoji and GIFs and
stickers. You can call or video chat. Press the "plus" sign and you can
send money, or your location, or summon a Food Network branded extension
for some ungodly reason. You can send a thumbs up. You can also, I’m
fairly certain, still type actual words.
Some
of those choices persist in Lite, but not nearly enough to cause
paralysis. You can still send a sticker, but it doesn’t animate. You can
still snap a photo or dictate or call. But Lite does not contain the
intricate, endless tunnel system that Messenger employs to squeeze all
of its features into one bitty app. You can’t get lost in Lite. You can,
though, send and receive messages quickly and efficiently, which seems
just about perfect for an app called Messenger.
As
user experience goes, I’m not sure what else to tell you, other than
that all of the puffery in and around Messages mostly exists to keep you
staring at Messages rather than necessarily improving your life and
mind. You only have so many engaged minutes to give in one lifetime.
Don’t spend them lobbing ingredients at a Food Network bot.
Shoot the Messenger
Lite
doesn’t just save you time because there’s less to fiddle with. It also
spares you very real seconds—and frustration—by not sputtering under
its own weight, as its fuller-featured counterpart most certainly can
and does. It’s a greyhound next to a slobbering Messenger mastiff.
Slimming down has other, unseen benefits as well.
Lite takes up less than 10MB on your phone—and nearly 10 times less
space than Messenger. The side benefit of stripping down so many
features is that you use far less data. And it won’t stress your battery
as much.
If you’re a Messenger power user,
well, frankly you haven’t read this far because you’ve already switched
back to your Word With Friends game. But everyone else: Switch to Lite.
You can still get in touch with anyone who has a Facebook account. You
can still make free calls over Wi-Fi. You can still give a thumbs up.
But you can do it all without feeling like you’ve been dropped inside a
digital labyrinth, a social (media) experiment to see just how many
times you can tap your screen without actually accomplishing anything.
Civilization
may well have reached a point where contacting people over Facebook is
an occasional necessity. But Messenger Lite at least means you can go
ahead and get it over with.
