Messenger Overview

Basic

Any app can let people send images, videos, GIFs and sound clips through Messenger. When someone sends something with your app, their friend will see your app's name and logo. Make sure you follow our Platform Policies.

Optimized

Apps that follow our guidelines and policies, and submit for App Review, can optimize their integration with Messenger. You can test the optimized flow by adding people to the Tester role in your apps' dashboard.

As with basic sharing, your app's name and logo will be on everything sent from your app. But with optimized sharing, you'll also be able to drive growth and engagement, right from a conversation.

Discovery

Introduce your app to the 600M+ people using Messenger. When someone sends something with your app, their friend will see where it came from, along with a link to install. Tapping Install will take them directly to the relevant store, so they can join their friends and start using your app too.

Engagement

Drive engagement with Reply links built right into the conversation. These bring people directly back to your app, where they can find more stuff to send to their friends in Messenger.

Requirements for optimized apps

Messenger must be the primary share option for the experience people see when they come from Messenger via the reply attribution links.
You must add analytics so that you can get metrics and measure the performance of your integration. See the Analytics section in the tech docs.
Apps must be published to app stores before submission to Facebook for App Review.

Getting Featured

Once your app is approved for optimized sharing, it may also be featured within Messenger. People can discover featured apps in Messenger, and install them with one tap. Featured apps are listed below the apps that are already installed, and tapping them will take you to the relevant app store.

Think of featured apps as an editorial list of some of the best Messenger integrations.

Requirements to get featured:

Share to Messenger

Your app should make it easier for people to have quick, back and forth conversations with your content. To do this, you must either make an app exclusively for Messenger or offer a Messenger-exclusive flow in your existing app that:

Limits the sharing actions to Messenger’s Send button and Save to Camera Roll.
Uses the official Messenger Send button whenever you initiate a send to Messenger. See Brand Guidelines.

Reply to Messenger

To keep conversations active, when someone replies with your app (either by tapping Reply or through a shortcut in the composer):

Land them directly in a Messenger-exclusive content-creation experience and have a back button that returns them to Messenger if they decide not to create content.
Display content that’s relevant to the conversation and, if possible, its participants. (You can use metadata for content and/or app scoped IDs for participants as outlined in the tech docs. See Messenger for iOS, Accessing Metadata or Messenger for Android, Accessing Metadata.
Match the instructions for adding a reply flow in the tech docs. See Messenger for iOS, Handle Calls for Reply or Messenger for Android, Optimized Integration.

If you already meet all requirements to get featured, you should not re-submit your app for review. When selected, you will be notified directly.

Guidelines for Optimized Apps

If you’re interested in integrating optimized sharing, make sure your app fits with the platform’s goal of enabling expressive conversations by following these guidelines:

It's Conversational

Creates short-form content
Elicits a response

It's Expressive

Expresses an emotion or phrase
Easy to create

It's Personal

Can be tailored to the conversation
Optimized for private sharing (ex: stickers, short video, sound clips)
Limited or no broadcast sharing (ex: long articles, leader boards)

If you don’t think your app fits these general guidelines, consider using the Message Dialog instead.

Login Guidelines

Minimize friction between the moment someone taps “Install” and when they begin sharing content from your app.
Consider having no login, or a Facebook login, with alternate ways to log in for existing users only.

Branding

Follow our Brand Guidelines for App icon and naming.

Learn More

Message Dialog

If your app isn't focused on content-creation, then you should consider using the Message Dialog, which is an alternative way to publish content into Messenger. This method of sharing is more appropriate when you want to link people away from Messenger and into your website or app. Examples include sending links to long form content like an article, links to product details in your app or to a mobile game.