Facebook is the new Orkut and Facebook Messenger is the new GTalk. It’s how most of your friends, if not you, like to communicate. A lot of people hate that Facebook Messenger on Android and iOS was split from the main app and that you can no longer use the main app to chat. I like the Messenger app and the reason is that it is hands down the best way to chat with my friends. Also, when you’re in the Messenger app, you’re not distracted by Facebook itself. There’s no notifications popping up, no timeline refreshing.
Apr 01, 2020 Oddly the sidebar does not show the same chat group icon as the web does for marketplace related chats. Normally the icon is the item being sold, but this app instead shows the user profile icon. This leads to confusion. The iOS app and web site display the correct icon, only this mac os app.
Having this experience on a Mac is surprisingly hard. Chat and Facebook on the web are too deeply intertwined. And before you ask me, yes, I’ve tried IM apps. In the days of GTalk and Yahoo Messenger I used to be a big fan of IM clients. But they just don’t work with Facebook. First, I use Facebook chat on multiple devices. The iPhone and iPad being the prominent ones (the ones where Facebook Messenger does a great job). The thing with IM clients is that the chat history is limited to the app.
So if I’m using an IM client on Mac (Adium was my choice), and I switch to the iPhone for a while, the messages I typed on the iPhone won’t show up in Adium. When I switched to the Mac, I lacked context and for some reason this really annoyed me. I’ve tried a couple of Chrome extensions that try to bring Facebook chat out of Facebook but none of them really worked.
I’m glad to say that I’ve been successful in my pursuit of finding a good Facebook chat client for Mac. One where it’s just about the chat, without any other Facebook distractions. In fact, I found two solutions. One paid, one free (with ads). Read on to find out which might suit you best.
Current for Facebook
Current ($1.99) is not solely a Facebook chat app, even though that’s how I use it. It can run the Facebook’s web interface inside a window, just like any other browser. But it has features like pop-out windows for viewing photos and video, and device-level integration for notifications.
What I like most is its menu bar utility. When you click the menu bar icon for Current, it opens up a drop-down window that contains friend requests, messages, and notifications. Clicking a recent chat opens it in a new window. Each chat gets its own floating window that you can move anywhere on the screen.
I’ve turned off notifications for anything other than messages from Facebook and I don’t open the main window, which loads up the Facebook homepage (it shows Facebook ads and I’m not a big fan of ads on Facebook).
What I love about Current: It’s fast. And stable. After using so many sucky IM clients and hacks for enabling Facebook chat on desktop, I’m surprised how good Current is. I can have four conFree Chat Apps For Pc
current chats and it doesn’t miss a beat. Clicking on a notification brings me to the chat window. There’s no lag anywhere. The app is totally worth the $2 asking price, and more.ChatBook for Facebook
ChatBook is an app expressly built for chat. It’s free and ad supported (though you can pay $1.99 to remove these). While I’ve yet to see an ad, I have gotten annoying pop-ups for upgrading to a pro account. And this happens out of the blue, when you’re not even using the app. Very annoying.
The app replicates the sidebar from Facebook, including the ticker. Which is weird because it’s an app that’s just meant for chatting. But this problem is easy to solve. Just grab the divider between the ticker and friend list and drag it all the way up.
The way the app handles individual chats is also similar to Facebook’s website. They snap to a grid at the bottom of the screen. You can’t pop any windows out, and when a chat window is on screen, so is the friend list. There’s no way to separate them.
The app does have a handy stay-on-top feature. This is a feature I wish Current had. Browsing the web when you have a Facebook chat docked at the corner of the screen is incredibly useful. Although, with ChatBook, you’re looking at wasting about half your screen.
The Winner: Current for Facebook
Current costs $2 but I think it’s totally worth it. When it comes to a pure chatting experience that’s disengaged from the Facebook website but is integrated with the OS, Current is the best.
ChatBook is free but to use it for free you need to put up with annoying pop-ups that come out of nowhere. The Pro version of ChatBook costs $1.99, the same as Current.
Even looking at it from a purely economic perspective, it’s better to pay $2 up front for an app that offers a generally superior experience (along with full Facebook access if you’re interested in using it) than an app that puts you through annoying pop-ups.
How Do You Chat on Facebook?
How do you use Facebook chat on all your various devices? Let us know in the comments below.
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Also See#chat #facebook
Did You Know
Facebook took 2 years to reach a market audience of 50 million people.
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In this world of social media, we've got a lot of chat channels to keep track of. Whether you're checking your Twitter DMs, GChats (Google Talk), Facebook Messenger messages, or iMessages, you can have most of them in one place with a dedicated chat client. These are the best chat apps for Mac.
Messages
Free Chat Apps For Mac Download
Apple's built-in chat client, Messages, makes it seamless for you to chat with anyone that has an iPhone, iPad, or Mac without any effort. You can add SMS and texts messaging from Android or Windows phones to Messages if you have Text Message Forwarding enabled. It gets better, though. Thanks to a little help from Jabber, you can use Messages for dozens of chat channels that use XMPP instant messaging. It's lost some of its universal appeal over the last few macOS updates, however. Messages no longer works with Facebook, AOL Instant Messenger, or Yahoo. It's also very difficult to get Messages to work with GChat (though not impossible).
- Free - It's already on your Mac!
Adium
Adium is probably the most popular third-party chat client. You can connect it to AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk, Twitter, MobileMe, IRC, Bonjour, Jabber, plus a few more. It's a great way to keep most (if not all) of your various chat clients in order. I personally don't like the interface of Adium, but sometimes function is more important than looks. Adium has a lot of little features that are really awesome, like initiating encrypted ORT chats, and file transfers. You can't get it in the Mac App Store, but it's free and open source and it's highly rated among Mac users.
- Free - Download now
Trillian
Trillian is another popular chat client that brings together many of your messaging apps into one place, including AOL Instant Messenger, Facebook, Google Talk, ICQ, Olark, and Twitter. I much prefer Trillian's interface because it reminds me so much of the built-in Messages app. It is, however, slightly less feature-rich unless you go pro. You can get quite a few more business-facing features for about $2 per month. It's a seamless experience for Mac users and my personal favorite third-party client, but I don't use a lot of different chat channels in my daily life. I stick with Google Talk, Facebook, and Twitter. It's perfect for me.
- Free - Download now
YakYak
I haven't personally used YakYak, but it's a big hit with Mac users that only want a Google Talk client. You may have noticed that GTalk compatibility with Messages in macOS High Sierra is difficult, to say the least. If you just want to be able to chat with your Google peeps with a dedicated window on your Mac, YakYak looks like the perfect option. You can upload images, group chat, and more. You have to install it from GitHub, but there are some fairly clear instructions on how to do so if you're saavy with your Mac. It's not a Chrome extension and doesn't rely on Chrome to work. So, if you're anti-Chrome, this apps is for you.
- Free - Download now
How do you chat on Mac?
Free Chat Apps For Mac Computer
What is your preferred chat client for bringing together all of your various chat channels? Put your recommendations in the comments and I'll check them out.
macOS Catalina
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