How to Use FaceBook Messenger on Mac OS X via Messages App

Facebook Messenger is a popular means of communicating, but the Mac doesn’t have a dedicated Facebook messaging app like the iPhone or Android does… or does it. Indeed, you can use Facebook Messenger to message friends from OS X, and in moments you can set up the Mac Messages app to function as a Facebook Messenger client in OS X.

Using Facebook Messenger from the Mac is indeed fairly elementary, but it’s entirely separate from configuring Facebook sharing from the Mac, so if you have done one but not the other, you’d need to accomplish both to have the utter Facebook functions of sharing, posting, and messaging available to you in OS X.

How to Add Facebook Messenger to Messages in OS X

This basically turns your Messages app into a utter fledged Mac Facebook Messenger client, you’ll be set up in just a few seconds with these instructions:

1. Open the Messages app on the Mac if you haven’t done so yet

From the message account screen, choose “Other messages account…” and click on “Proceed”

Pull down the menu next to “Account Type” and select ‘Jabber’ from the list

In “Account Name” inject your Facebook account user name as goes after: [email protected] (a Facebook username is whatever your Facebook profile URL is, for example: ‘www.facebook.com/your_name_here’ the username would be “your_name_here” and the account name would then be [email protected])

Inject your Facebook account password in the password field, this is the same one you use to login to Facebook from the web or the apps

Overlook all other settings and choose “Create” – this will setup Facebook messaging client and in a moment you’ll see your Facebook Friends list populate as a friend list, accomplish with friend names and friend profile pictures

Message anyone in the list as usual, the conversations are going through Facebook Messenger

If you’re on a Mac, the capability to have Facebook Messenger conversations right in the Messages app of OS X is indeed fairly nice, the conversations will emerge alongside other text messages and iMessages, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, or AOL / AIM communications.

Once you have Facebook Messenger added to Messages, you will be automatically logged into Facebook Messenger when the Messages app opens. To log out of Facebook Messenger in Messages, simply pull down the “Messages” menu item and choose “Log out of talk.facebook.com” – similarly, you can log in that way as well.

You can access the Facebook Friends mate list at any time from the “Windows” menu item in Messages app, where you can also set your status to be online or offline, or away.

This certainly hits having a web browser window open to Facebook.com on a Mac, and if you have set up Facebook posts and sharing in OS X you now have much of the Facebook functionality right in OS X without having to go to the website to talk to friends, share stuff, or post status updates.

What if you don’t have Messages for OS X? All modern Macs should, but if you’re using an older version of Mac system software that has the iChat app instead, don’t worry, you can also use Facebook talk in iChat too. The configuration and setup process is a little bit different, but the protocol is the same as is the capability to have a utter conversation with your Facebook mates. So, whatever your version of OS X on whatever your Mac, you’ll be Facebooking. Good for you. And no, if Facebook has been blocked on the network or hosts file, this will not bypass it.

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