Facebook Now Allows Cross-app Group Chats Between Instagram and Messenger

Facebook’s plan to unify its messaging apps is beginning to take shape. The company announced Thursday that it will now let you start cross-app group chats between Messenger and Instagram. The update is a big step forward in Facebook’s ambitions to make its apps work better with each other. To be able to use the cross-app communications, you’ll have to opt-in, and Facebook says that “over 70% of eligible people on Instagram have updated to the new Messenger experience.”

The company is bringing other new features to the messaging apps in addition to cross-app group messaging. Polls will be available in group DMs on Instagram and in cross-app chats so you can, for example, vote on where to grab lunch. Facebook has added group typing indicators to Messenger, so you can see when multiple people are drafting a message. You can now use Facebook’s Watch Together feature to watch videos from your Instagram feed with your friends.

These updates come just hours before the company is set to testify before the Senate about the mental health harms of Instagram and Facebook. But these additions have more to do with a separate government probe into Facebook’s operations. Facebook is facing a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that Facebook is a monopoly and must be broken up.

But as individual products under the Facebook umbrella rely on each other more and more, it could allow the company to argue that these apps are dependent on one another and cannot be separated. Last month, as Facebook Messenger celebrated its 10th anniversary, a Facebook spokesperson commented that the company is thinking of Messenger as a “connective tissue regardless of the surface.”

Facebook is also adding new chat themes to Messenger, including a “cottagecore” theme, one inspired by J Balvin’s latest album, and an astrology theme.