Facebook Enables SMS Integration in Messenger For SMS

By the end of this week, Facebook expects to complete a "major" update to Messenger for Android that will enable people to use the app to send and receive standard SMS text messages. Vice president of messaging products David Marcus announced the update yesterday in a post on his Facebook page.

Rolling out to "most countries," the latest version of Messenger for Android will be a fully integrated app that supports a variety of other features on top of standard texting, Marcus said. Those features include support for stickers, voice clips, chat heads and sharing of location information.
Previously we had seen Facebook allowed users to exchange SMS messages within the Messenger itself back in 2013, but due to lack of support from usage, it was dropped. However, due to increase in demand of SMS this year, Facebook decided to bring it back.

“Today we are enabling people to use SMS in Messenger for Android to communicate with their family, friends and phone contacts. What this means is you will now have the choice to be able to send and receive your SMS/texts in Messenger and will not have to go to different screens on your phone to communicate.” Facebook, wrote in a blog post.

A company spokesperson confirmed the SMS test, saying:

At Messenger we are always trying to create new ways for people to communicate seamlessly with everyone. Right now, we’re testing the ability for people to easily bring all their conversations – from SMS and Messenger – to one place. It’s a really simple way to get, see and respond to all your SMS messages in just one app. By choosing to access your SMS messages in Messenger, they’re right alongside all the other enhanced features that Messenger offers.

SMS conversations will show up in purple text while Messenger conversations will appear in blue, according to the Messenger page on Facebook. While the updated app will support both standard text and rich content like stickers and emojis, it will not support the sending of GIFs, video or voice calls, transportation requests or money transfers -- to handle such tasks, users will have to use the standard Messenger app.

For now, the updated Messenger functionality is available only for Android devices, although SMS texts sent via the app can be read by recipients on any platform, Facebook said. A spokesperson for Facebook told us today that there are currently no plans to make similar features available on Messenger for iOS "as iOS doesn't currently support app permissions for access [to] text messages/SMS."

To use this feature you just need to select the tab “SMS” and have to enable the “Default Sms App” option. Once you enabled this your SMS conversations will be shown in purple just behind the “Facebook conversations”. It also allows you to send stickers, emojis, and location sharing too. Currently, the feature is only available on Android.