20 Facebook Messenger Tips and Tricks

By Hongkiat Lim. in Social Media. Updated on December 15, 2022.

Facebook is the most popular social media app in the world and its messaging app the Facebook Messenger is not too far behind. Almost everyone who uses Facebook, uses the Messenger for chatting with friends.

However, most people don’t know about the cool features that Facebook has added to the Messenger app. So here’s a post that lists some of the best and most useful Facebook Messenger tips to help you use the app to its full potential. Ready? Let’s take a look.

1. Block messages from a business

You once had a conversation with a business page on Facebook Messenger but now they’re nagging you with their sales promotions. Well, there’s a simple solution to get rid of that.

Open the conversation that you had with a business.
In the top right corner, tap the blue tick mark icon and then tap Turn Messages Off.

Now if the business will try to send you a message, they’ll get a prompt that this person is not contactable on the Messenger.

Additionally, after blocking the contact, if you tap More options, you’ll be able to Hide, Delete, or Unblock the conversation.

2. Hide an ad

Even though Facebook Messenger ads are not that annoying and appear as one of the conversations, still, if you want to hide these ads, then there’s a simple way to do that.

In the Chats tab, swipe left on the ad.

Tap on the hamburger menu that appears and choose Hide ad.

3. Search in conversation

Sometimes you want to search something that you or your friend shared in your Facebook Messenger conversation. So, instead of scrolling through the entire conversation, you can use the search in conversation option.

Here’s how to do it:

Open any conversation and tap your contact’s profile picture.

In the Settings, tap Search in conversation.

Now in the search field, type any keyword that you want to look for. It’ll instantly produce all the results matching your keyword.

4. Create a Messenger Room

An interesting feature of the Facebook Messenger is the Messenger Room. It is a video chat room where you can connect with people through link sharing and anyone with the shared link can join even if they don’t have a Facebook or Messenger account. To create a Messenger room:

Go to People and tap Active.

Here tap Create a Room and then tap Try It.

Now your device’s camera will be activated for the video call. However, at this point, you’ll see two options to add the participants:

People with the link (anyone with the link can join the room).
Only people on Facebook (Only the people who have a Facebook account can join the room).

Once you decide who can join your room, tap Share Link to invite people to your video chat.

5. Turn on dark mode

Dark mode is the newest UI trend among apps and operating systems. Like many other apps, you can change the UI of your Facebook Messenger to Dark mode. Here’s how you can activate it:

Tap on your profile picture to go to your Settings.
Here, tap Dark mode > On to activate dark mode UI.

6. Use the desktop version (messenger.com)

There’s a Facebook Messenger mobile app and there’s a Messenger in your browser that you can access through Facebook. But did you know that there’s a third way to access the Messenger i.e. through messenger.com.

Though messenger.com won’t have all the features of the Facebook Messenger app, but it can be a good option when you cannot access the Messenger through any other way.

7. Start a secret conversation

There are times when you want to have a sensitive conversation with one of your Facebook contacts. In such a case, Facebook Messenger allows you to start a secret conversation that is end-to-end encrypted.

To start a secret conversation in the Messenger app:

Tap the new message icon at the top right corner.
Tap Secret and then select the contact with whom you want to have the secret conversation.

You can also change an existing conversation to secret by tapping the person’s name at the top and selecting Go to Secret Conversation.

What’s interesting about secret conversations is that you can set a timer for each message by tapping on the timer icon in the text field and then choosing any time between 5 seconds to 1 day, after which the message will disappear once it’s read by the receiver.

If you’re not seeing this option in your Messenger app, then you’ll have to activate it in the settings. To do that:

Tap on your profile picture in the top left corner.
Go to Secret conversations and toggle it On.
You can also Delete Secret Conversations on this same page.

8. Share your location

Facebook Messenger allows you to share your current location with any of your Facebook friends so it becomes easy for them to reach you.

To share your location:

Open any conversation and tap the plus (+) icon at the bottom left.

Tap the Location icon (arrow icon on the right) and you’ll see a map with pin appearing at your exact geolocation.
Tap Start Sharing Live Location and your friend will know where to find you.

9. Send video messages

Just like sending voice messages, you can use Facebook Messenger to send video messages as well to your contacts.

To do this in the Facebook Messenger in your browser:

Open a conversation and click on the camera icon at the bottom left.

Choose Take Video, record your video message and send it.

Similarly, to send video message on the Facebook Messenger mobile app:

Open any conversation and tap the camera icon.

In the camera view, hold down the button in the center to create the video. Once you release this button, your video will start previewing.

Now tap Send to share it with your contact.

10. Make audio/ video calls or send a voice message

Going beyond the textual conversation, Facebook Messenger allows you to have voice and video calls with your contacts.

Just open any conversation and tap the voice call or video call icon at the top right corner.

You can also send voice messages to your contacts by tapping the mic icon at the bottom and then tapping the red Record button.

11. Manage groups

Most messaging apps allow you to create and manage group conversations and Facebook Messenger is not an exception. This feature especially comes in handy when you have to coordinate with a number of your Facebook friends and sometimes even non-friends.

You can create a group through following these steps:

Tap the new message icon at the top right corner and a list of suggested contacts will pop up.
Select the ones that you want to add in the group and tap Done.

If the people you want to add in the group are not in the list of suggested contacts, you can look for them in the search field above. You could even add the people in your group who’re not among your Facebook friends.

Once a group is created, you can go to the group setting from where you can change the color theme of the group, give nicknames to the members, change the group’s name, and make other customizations.

12. Mute group notifications

Facebook Messenger group conversations are pretty helpful in communicating and coordinating with a group of friends simultaneously.

However, when the group members start sharing messages that are irrelevant to you (those cat videos and motivational quotes), then you see no option but to mute the bugging notifications.

To mute the group notifications:

In the Chat tab, swipe left on the group conversation.
Tap on the bell icon and select for how long you want this group chat to be muted.

You’ll see a menu box with different time durations – from 15 minutes to 24 hours and even ‘Until I turn it back on‘, to which you can mute the notifications.

If you don’t want to just mute the notifications but not receive them at all, then there’s an option to Ignore Messages in the group settings.

After turning this option on, the group will be moved to the Filtered Messages and you won’t get any notifications. Also, none of your group members will know that you’ve ignored the group messages.

Note: The option to mute notifications is not available in the Messenger mobile app.

13. Create and share stories

You can use Facebook Messenger to create and share a story with your friends. Quite like Instagram and Snapchat, you can share a picture or video that your friends can view and that lasts for 24 hours.

To create a story:

Go to Your Story button at the top left corner and tap on the plus (+).
It’ll land you on your the photo album from where you can select photos or video or access the camera to take one right away.

You can post your story to all the people in your Facebook contacts or send it to selected ones as a message. Just select the contacts you want to share your story with and tap Send.

Note: This option is available in the Messenger mobile app only.

14. See someone’s story anonymously

If you want to see a friend’s story on the Facebook Messenger but don’t want them to know that you have, then there’s a way to do that.

In the Messenger app, tap People at the bottom and then tap Stories at the top right corner. Here you’ll see all the stories that your friends have shared within the last 24 hours.

Even though the story will be shown as a thumbnail preview, but it’s still large enough for anyone to make out what it’s about.

However, one downside to this trick is that you cannot see all the stories shared by your friends and only the most latest one will be visible to you.

15. Mute story from a contact

Not all stories shared by your contacts in the Messenger are interesting. So if you don’t want to see a story shared by a friend in your Messenger inbox, here’s what you can do:

Mute stories in iPhone:

Go to People tab > Stories and tap on the story that you want to hide.

Tap the horizontal ellipsis and then tap Mute story.

If you want to unhide a story/ stories:

Tap on your profile picture to go to the settings.
Scroll down to Story > Stories you’ve muted.

Uncheck the people whom you’ve muted the stories from.

Mute stories in Android:

Go to People and tap on your friend’s story.
Tap on the vertical ellipsis.
Tap Mute [your friend’s name’s] Story.

To unhide the stories from your friends:

From Chats, tap your profile picture.
Scroll down and tap Stories > Stories you’ve muted.
Tap Show and then tap Show next to the friend’s name whose stories you’d like to unhide.

16. Add nicknames

Who doesn’t have friends that don’t have a nickname. And at times you get so used to these nicknames that you don’t even recognize the person if they’re using their real name on Facebook.

Well, Facebook Messenger allows you to change any of your contacts names and give them a nickname of your choice. Here’s how to do it:

Tap on the name of your contact and go to Edit nicknames.
Set a nickname for your friend.
Now tap Save.

Setting nicknames can also help you distinguish between your contacts if more than one of them share the same name and adds a fun factor to your conversation as well.

Note: Only you and your friend will be able to see the nickname that you set for them.

17. Play games with your contacts

Facebook Messenger offers you to play games with any of your contacts whom you’re having a conversation with.

Just open a conversation with one of your contacts and click the game console icon on your chat panel. It’ll open up a menu box showing an array of different games.

You can simply click on Play to send an invite and start playing the game with your contact right into the conversation.

Note: This option is available only on the Messenger in your browser and not on the Messenger mobile app.

18. Add additional accounts

For those who have more than one Facebook account (either for business or stalking purposes), Facebook Messenger allows you to add all your additional accounts into the same app.

To add additional accounts into your Messenger app:

Tap your profile picture to go to the Settings.
Tap Switch Account and then tap Add in the top right corner. From here you can add as many accounts to your Messenger app as you want (provided you own them).

Also, you can click on Create New Account at the bottom of the same page to create a new Facebook account right through the Messenger app.

19. Check messages from non-friends

In the Facebook Messenger, you only see the messages from the people who are already in your friends list. However, at times you may get messages from people who’re not on your friends list. To check such messages:

Tap your profile picture to go to the Settings.
Tap Message Requests and you’ll see all the messages sent to you by non-friends on Facebook.

20. Create a poll

It can be really hard to get a group to make a decision or ask their opinion on a certain subject. Through Facebook Messenger, however, you can solve this issue by creating a poll on any number of things.

In the conversation window of a group, tap the plus (+) icon.
Tap the bar graph icon at the left.
In the box that appears, write the question that you want to ask your group members and add options under it.
Once done, tap Create Poll button and your poll will be posted to all members in that group.