After launching Facebook Messenger Lite for developing countries, Facebook has decided to focus on reducing the data usage on its Messenger app. The original app is data hungry and users have been complaining about unnecessary use of internet.
The regular Messenger app will be getting an update in a few weeks as Facebook is testing including a ‘Data Saver’ option in the app itself. This way users will be able to restrict background data and auto-download of media.
There are third-party applications that can also help users restrict data usage on such applications, but having an official in-built option is probably the best. This feature is currently being tested on the beta version of the app for Android.
The feature will come with a toggle in the application that you can modify depending on your requirements.
How does it work?
Just like data saving options in WhatsApp and other applications, this feature will allow you to pick what media you want to download. Currently any media on Messenger is downloaded automatically, and there is no setting in place to restrict that.
With the data saver mode on, Messenger will request you to download the media file now or later, depending on whether you want to use your mobile data or WiFi. Hence, data saver will not work on WiFi and the media files will get downloaded automatically.
There is a data saver option in Android Nougat 7.0 as well, that restricts background data and can be very handy when you’re short of those bytes. Many companies and their applications now come with this nifty feature and is becoming an important seller for a few.
If you want to join Android app testing programme for Messenger, you can sign up on Google Play and enjoy the first few unofficial releases of this app. However, this may be prone to bugs and you might want to wait a while for the official release. Those who recently uninstalled the app because of high data consumption, can now enjoy this feature in the future releases.