I have Facebook on both my computer and phone. I use it to follow a couple of groups, keep up with what’s going on in my nieces’ and nephews’ lives, and wish happy birthday to people. I can count on one hand the number of posts other than Happy Birthday! or Way to Go! or Your Baby is so Adorable! I’ve made in the last year.
I know almost nothing about Facebook. I don’t want to know anything about Facebook. The only thing I know about Messenger is that I HATE it. People keep trying to contact me via Messenger, which puts their profile picture on my phone screen and generally blocks me from seeing whatever it is on my phone I want to see.
Today my phone made a sound I’d never heard before. It turned out to be a notification from a cousin with whom I have not conversed in like 20 years, wanting me to join some video chat in his “room” whatever that is.
I want to turn off Messenger now and forever. I’ve looked up how to do so, and the instructions start with something like, “While in chat …” I do not know what chat is or how to get to it. I do not want to know.
So, can someone kindly tell me how to permanently get rid of Messenger without assuming I know anything much about Facebook? I need instructions on the level of “Click on the icon that looks like a gear.”
This might help temporarily, until someone comes along with a permanent total solution. NOTE: I am not an expert in Facebook or much of anything else.
Open Facebook on your computer.
Click on the Messenger icon (upper right on my screen, looks like a word bubble with an N in it, or a jagged something). The icon should have a popup label “Messenger” when you hover your pointer over it.
Click on the three dots right next to the word Messenger, at the top of the Messenger window. The three dots should have a popup label “Options” when you hover your pointer over it.
Here you can turn off popup messages (click on the blue sliding dot thing and it will turn gray). If you haven’t already, you can also turn off Incoming Call Sounds and Message Sounds in the same way.
This should prevent you from getting any notifications from Messenger, I think. You might have to do the same on your phone, I don’t know if the Options carry over to another device.
Now, still in Settings, there is another item in the lower section, called Turn Off Active Status. If you click on that it will open another little window with some choices that should be fairly obvious, and some explanation of what this will do, and a “Learn more” link. I am not sure what the implications are for enabling this, because I find the explanation ambiguous. But it might be full the full cancellation that you want.
On my phone (iPhone), Facebook and Messenger are different apps. So you can just delete the Messenger app off your phone with the normal method for deleting apps (on iPhone, hold down until the little cross appears in the top right, click the cross - don’t know how this goes on an Android)
That doesn’t get it off your computer, but it gets rid of the main thing that’s causing you a problem.
Thanks! It took me a while to try this because somehow I messed up my FB settings so that I wasn’t at Home – and the three dots for Messenger weren’t there. Finally got it back to where I wanted it, and your instructions worked beautifully.
That’s reasonable, because the computer version has the two of them integrated.
Note: This ain’t going to stop your friends and FB contacts potentially sending you “Messenger” messages and becoming mystified/snippy/snarky when you don’t respond. Because your account details for the two are integrated, so having a FB account at all means you have a Messenger account by default. I don’t know of any way round that, and it’s not particularly in FB’s interest to make it so!