You Can Now Call Up Facebook Messenger with Siri and Leave Video Voicemails
Toggle Dark Mode
Meta is giving (Facebook) Messenger another nice update, bringing new voice and video calling features and tightening integration with Siri for hands-free calling and messaging.
The popular messaging app sometimes feels redundant, coming from the same company that makes WhatsApp. That’s even more true since it’s begun distancing itself from Facebook by dropping the social media network’s name. However, despite the name change, it remains joined at the hip to Facebook and, therefore, incredibly popular among Facebook users, in contrast to WhatsApp, which is an entirely standalone app and service that just happens to be owned by the same parent company.
Its continued tight integration with Facebook makes it easy to use Messenger to stay in touch with people based on their social media profiles, and Meta points out that people are collectively spending over 7 billion minutes a day using Messenger’s calling features. So, it’s no wonder the company is constantly looking for new features it can bring.
Last year’s big update focused more on text-based messaging, adding end-to-end encryption across the board and disabling read receipts — two features that iMessage has had since its inception in 2011 — plus the ability to edit sent messages, duplicating what Apple added in iOS 16. In the spring, Meta also increased attachment sizes and sharing limits.
However, those updates did little for voice and video calling, which is where most of these latest changes come in.
AI Backgrounds and HD Video
The marquee feature is new AI backgrounds for video calls. This builds on the AI-generated chat themes Meta introduced in December and brings them to live calls. Several stock backgrounds are provided, and Meta AI can be used to build personalized ones with your own flair.
Messenger has been rolling out HD-quality video messages over the past year, and it looks like it’s now ready to bring that to live video chats. Video calls will run in HD quality whenever conditions allow, although they’ll be off on cellular connections by default to save data. Background noise suppression and voice isolation will also help you get clearer audio. However, we’ll have to wait and see if they’re any better than the iPhone’s built-in Voice Isolation, which works with any iOS video or audio calling app, including Messenger.
Finally, Messenger now offers what is effectively video and audio voicemail by letting you leave a message when someone doesn’t pick up. Apple added this to FaceTime in iOS 17 last year. This makes it even more interesting that Messenger is behind the curve as it’s supported video and voice messages in conversations for years, and this new feature is really just an extension of that.
Siri Integration
Apple has allowed third-party messaging and calling apps to integrate with Siri since iOS 10 was released in 2016, but it’s still up to individual developers to add support for this. Better late than never, Messenger is finally coming on board to let you use Siri to place calls and send messages using your voice.
You can now ask Siri to send a message via Messenger, using the same language you’d use for Apple’s Messages app and simply suffixing it or prefixing it with “using Messenger.” For example, “Using Messenger, tell Nora I’m running late” will automatically send “I’m running late” to Nora (although you may need to be more specific if you have multiple contacts with similar names). You can place calls with your voice in the same way, by simply adding “Using Messenger” before or after your request.
Unfortunately, you’ll have to use that it doesn’t look like there’s any way to set Messenger as a default calling or messaging app, but that could be coming soon. Meta’s timing is interesting on this one, as it appears iOS 18.2 is bringing a new “Default Apps” section that expands the previous ability to set default browser and email apps to also encompass messaging, calling, and contactless payments. There’s no word on whether Meta intends to support this feature, but it seems the new Siri integration is laying the groundwork for it.
