Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is introducing Slack-like shortcuts to Messenger that let you do things like send a message silently or quickly call up a GIF while you’re chatting with your friends.
Messenger gets new shortcuts that let you send silent replies
There’s also one that pings everyone, so please use it responsibly
There’s also one that pings everyone, so please use it responsibly
is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
Two of the shortcuts are available today, March 29th, according to Meta: @everyone and /silent. @everyone will let you notify everyone in a chat, which could be useful if you want to make sure to get everyone’s attention. (On behalf of your friends’ notifications, I beg you to please use this one responsibly.) However, if you want to send a message without pinging the whole group, you’ll be able to use the /silent shortcut, Meta says.
In “the coming weeks,” there will be a few more shortcuts. /pay will let you send or request money right from the Messenger chatbox and will be available soon on iOS and Android in the US. Type /gif and a topic of something you want a GIF of to see some potential options to drop in the chat. This feature will be available soon on iOS. And /shrug and /tableflip, which will also be available soon on iOS, will let you drop the classic ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ emoticons without having to type them out yourself.
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