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Meta’s Messenger is one of the most popular chat services in the world, but soon it will be ending support for two different platforms. The brand is shutting down support for both its desktop apps in the coming months, meaning you’ll have to switch to a web browser to use Messenger on your Mac or Windows computer.
The announcement from Meta says it will deprecate the app on Dec. 15. Until Dec. 14, you’ll be able to continue using the app as per normal. If you’ve used the desktop app in the last few days, you may already have been notified about the shut down.
Meta says, “Once the 60 days are over, you’ll be blocked from using the [Mac and Windows] Messenger app. We encourage you to delete the app since it will no longer be usable.” The app has already been removed from Apple’s App Store and Microsoft’s storefront.
Most user’s messages will be saved to their Facebook account allowing them to access them from other services. However, that’s not the case for everyone, so it’s worth checking to see if your Messenger backups are turned on.
You need to have secure storage switched on within your Facebook account, otherwise you’ll lose your chat history away from the desktop apps.
To do this, head to the Settings cog icon near your profile photo, then press Privacy & Safety > End-to-end encrypted chats. Here you’ll find an option called Message storage, and you’ll want to ensure the option called Turn on secure storage is toggled on.
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The brand hasn’t shared why it’s made the choice to shut down its desktop apps. There’s currently no sign of the brand closing its popular WhatsApp desktop app, so this may be due to low usage with many people opting to use Facebook Messenger on the web.
According to market data portal Statista, Messenger is the fourth biggest global messaging app in October 2025. WhatsApp is the biggest, which is Meta’s alternative service, at over three billion users, while China’s WeChat comes in second place. Telegram is third, followed by Messenger, and then Snapchat is the next biggest with a similar amount of users to Facebook’s tool.
Meta announced last week it would be closing chatbot support across WhatsApp, aside from the brand’s own tool. From Jan. 15, 2026, Meta AI will become the only chatbot on the service.
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