If you are one of the few people who still use Facebook Messenger (Meta just calls it Messenger now), then there’s some good news for you that might make it easier for you to chat with others on that platform. The company has introduced a new feature called Shortcuts to it which is “a new command system to help supercharge your messaging efficiency and add a little extra fun to your experience”.
So, if you want to notify everyone in a group chat about something important, pay a person back, or just express yourself, these shortcuts are going to make things easier for you.
The first of the shortcuts is the '@everyone' and /silent shortcuts. Typing ‘@’ and then a person’s name tags that specific person in the group chat, similar to what WhatsApp also supports. Now, instead of tagging one person to get their attention, if you want everyone on the group to check and respond/take notice, you can start a message with ‘@everyone’. This is going to notify all the participants in the group chat about the message. This feature is particularly helpful for important announcements, or when you need a quick response - “this way, your message gets maximum exposure, and nobody misses out”.
The better feature is perhaps the ‘/silent’ shortcut. When you use /silent (available on Instagram as @silent) the members on the chat will not get a notification of the message you have sent.
“Sending a message with /silent removes the anxiety of interrupting someone with a non-urgent pop-up notification or disturbing them during their off hours,” Meta explained.
Both the @everyone and the /silent feature is available to all Messenger users on iOS and Android.
There is also a /pay shortcut that is coming soon on both Android and iOS in the US. The /pay shortcut makes it easy to send and receive money from the one-on-one Messenger chats. “Simply type /pay to send or request money securely without fees - perfect for quickly paying a friend for dinner or getting paid back for a ride,” the platform explained.
Then there is a /gif shortcut coming soon on iOS which will help you find the right GIF by typing ‘/gif’ followed by the topic to pull up GIF options for you to pick from. iPhone users are also getting a /shrug and /tableflip shortcut to pull up the “(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻” and “¯_(ツ)_/¯” emoticons into your messages. This will save you from having to type these old-school emoticons out or having to copy paste them.
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