MANILA, Philippines (UPDATED) – Mobile Facebook users who have grown used to Facebook as a chat app will soon have to download Facebook’s Messenger app to keep using Facebook’s mobile chat function.

TechCrunch reports that – rather than a blog post announcing the change – Facebook users will receive a message about the change made to the system individually.

TechCrunch received the following message from Facebook: 

“In the next few days, we’re continuing to notify more people that if they want to send and receive Facebook messages, they’ll need to download the Messenger app. As we’ve said, our goal is to focus development efforts on making Messenger the best mobile messaging experience possible and avoid the confusion of having separate Facebook mobile messaging experiences. Messenger is used by more than 200 million people every month, and we’ll keep working to make it an even more engaging way to connect with people.”

Before the shift, users could take advantage of a Messages tab in the Facebook application. Users had the option to download Facebook Messenger to quickly switch from Facebook to Messenger for chatting.

Users who would like to get ahead of the curve and download Messenger ahead of time or missed downloading Messenger after being notified will want to visit Facebook’s Messenger site to pick up the applicable version for their operating system. – Rappler.com