Facebook Messenger rolling out Voice and Video calling for Windows 10

Laurent Giret

If you belong to the one billion monthly active users of Facebook Messenger, you’ll be happy to learn that the social network has started to roll out voice and video calls to its Messenger app on Windows 10 PCs. These features have been available on both iOS and Android for quite some time and are a great addition to what is already a pretty solid messaging app. A Facebook spokesperson told VentureBeat that the company started the roll out last week, though be aware that it may not be available for everyone as some of our Windows 10 PCs don’t have it yet.

As a reminder, the Facebook Messenger app for Windows 10 is the result of an iOS port, so you’ll be instantly familiar with it if you already tried it on an iOS device. When you’re chatting with someone, you’ll find the phone and video call buttons in the top right corner of the chat windows.

The voice and video call buttons are easy to spot.
The voice and video call buttons are easy to spot.

If you initiate a voice call with one of your contacts, you will be able to turn video on afterwards and mute yourself. Additionally, if the person you want to reach doesn’t answer your call the app will let you leave a voice message, which is pretty handy (notifications seem to work fine, for the record).

Overall, this app seems nearly feature-complete except for the absence of group video calls for now (group voice calls do work though). However, Facebook has been iterating quite fast since the release of its trio of Windows 10 apps back in April so we expect this feature to be available at a later time. For Windows 10 Mobile users, the same company’s spokesperson told VentureBeat that “the Windows Phone app does not have voice and video calling,” without explicitly saying if it was in the pipeline.