Facebook is winding down its dedicated desktop experience for Messenger, marking the end of an era for Mac and Windows users who relied on the standalone apps.
According to multiple Facebook Help Center pages, Meta is discontinuing its Messenger desktop apps across both macOS and Windows. While the company hasn’t announced an exact start date, users will receive an in‑app notification when the deprecation process begins. From that point, they’ll have 60 days to continue using the app before it stops working completely.
Once those 60 days expire, the desktop app will become nonfunctional. Meta is advising users to enable secure storage and set up a PIN to preserve their chat history before the cutoff. After deprecation, most users will be automatically redirected to Facebook.com when trying to access Messenger through the desktop client. Those who use Messenger without a Facebook account will instead be sent to Messenger.com.
The Messenger app has already vanished from the Mac App Store, making it unavailable for new downloads. However, mobile versions on iOS and Android remain unaffected and are expected to continue working normally.
The move doesn’t come as a shock. Meta had shifted the desktop Messenger experience to a Progressive Web App (PWA) in September 2024—a change that quickly drew complaints for its lack of polish and reliability. Now, the full retirement of the native desktop app simply finalizes that transition.
