We all love material design, and love Google’s head of design, Matias Duarte for it. We’ve seen many apps adopt material design already, and some take their own spin on material design. Facebook Messenger appears to be making their app a bit more material design-like. As they are currently testing a new version of the app which includes a floating action button, among other material design elements. There aren’t huge changes in the Messenger app, at least on this test build that a few people are using, but it does look pretty decent.
A few other changes include the icons in the tabs across the top of the app. They appear to be a bit more bold. And the Groups icon now includes two silhouettes instead of three, also a bit smaller, but a darker gray color as is the contacts and settings side of things. The settings icon, used to be an outline of a gear, but now it’s completely colored in and a bit darker as well. It also looks like Facebook is making the profile avatars a bit smaller, as well as the chats a bit smaller. This means you’ll be able to see more of your chats on a screen before needing to scroll down. Of course getting rid of that bar at the bottom and replacing it with a floating action button definitely helps that case a bit.
There’s a bunch of small changes here in the newest version of Facebook Messenger, but we have to say it does look pretty nice. While it may not be 100% material design, it does look nice and definitely performs better than the regular Facebook app. It’s worth noting here that it appears to be a server-side change and not a new update to the app. So if you’re excited to get your hands on this new version of Facebook Messenger, you’ll have to sit tight a bit longer until Facebook decides you are ready to handle the new changes. They are currently testing it, which likely means they want to see how users react to the changes before rolling them all out to everyone. Definitely a good idea.