Messenger’s desktop apps are dead—and Meta wants you back in the browser 💻

If you’ve opened Messenger on your Mac or Windows PC in recent days, you may have been greeted by a blunt message: the app is no longer available, please use your browser instead. This isn’t a bug. It’s a deliberate move by Meta. Messenger on desktop is officially over, replaced entirely by messenger.com and Facebook’s own apps.

Since mid-December 2025, the Messenger apps for Windows and macOS have been shut down—or are in the process of being shut down—after quietly disappearing from the Microsoft Store and the Mac App Store. In practice, launching the app now triggers a pop-up that redirects you to the web. On macOS, some users get a 60-day grace period before the app is fully blocked, but the destination is the same: the browser.

A hard shutdown, with no backup plan 🧨

Meta didn’t opt for a soft landing. Depending on the platform, between December 14 and 16, 2025, the desktop apps simply stopped working. No read-only mode. No frozen “final” version. Just a forced redirect to the web.

Most users learned about the change through a terse in-app alert, followed by coverage in the tech press, which quickly labeled it the “clinical death” of Messenger on desktop. On macOS, a handful of users can still limp along for up to 60 days after seeing the warning—but the outcome is inevitable: total lockout and the end of app-based access.

Meta is betting everything on the browser 🌐

From now on, Meta offers just three ways to keep chatting on a computer: messenger.com, Facebook’s built-in messaging interface, and—on Windows—the Facebook app itself. On macOS, the picture is even starker: the browser is the only officially supported path to Messenger.

There are workarounds, of course. You can turn Messenger into a “web app” via Safari, Chrome, or Edge. But they all rely on the same foundation: a website wrapped in a window. Notifications, system integration, and call handling are now at the mercy of the browser—typically heavier and far less seamless than a true native desktop app.

A cost-saving move… and a real step backward 💸⚙️

Meta hasn’t offered a detailed explanation, but the signs point in one direction: cutting the cost of building and maintaining native apps for Windows and macOS. Focusing on the web streamlines updates and development cycles—but it comes at the expense of desktop experience quality.

The irony is hard to miss. While WhatsApp and Instagram continue to gain real desktop features, Messenger is effectively rolling back a decade by abandoning dedicated apps altogether. Tech observers note that Messenger on Mac and Windows delivered tighter system integration—better notifications, smoother multitasking, more reliable calling—things a browser tab struggles to replicate.

Users take a back seat: a warning sign for the ecosystem 🧩

This shift reflects a broader industry trend: for some tech giants, the computer is once again treated as little more than a “web terminal,” especially for consumer messaging. Fewer native clients. More web wrappers and PWAs. And a growing blur between app and website—often at the expense of everyday comfort.

By pulling the plug on Messenger desktop while the apps were still perfectly usable, Meta sends a clear signal: internal optimization now outweighs continuity of use, even for millions of established users. The real question is how far we’re willing to go in sacrificing native desktop experiences under the assumption that “a browser tab is good enough.”

Have you seen that pop-up when opening Messenger on your Mac or PC? Can you live with a simple browser tab, or does this feel like a genuine downgrade? Share your experience in the comments—your daily workflow is worth more than a cost-cutting decision buried in a spreadsheet.