Facebook Messenger: How to use new Reactions and Mentions features

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox

Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice

Facebook has announced a pair of new features for its Messenger app.

The social network has launched Reactions and Mentions on Messenger, which allow you to call out friends using @ tags and quickly react to individual messages.

Reactions is intended as a bit of fun. Messenger now allows you to respond to messages, stickers, videos, GIFs and emoji in both one-on-one and group chats with one of seven emoji: love, smile, wow, sad, angry, yes and no.

Reactions appear below messages, and you can tap on the emoji to see who reacted in which way.

The main Facebook app introduced a feature called Reactions just over a year ago, though Facebook insists that the new version for Messenger is a completely separate product.

To add a Reaction on Messenger, simply open a conversation, tap and hold a message and select your emoji of choice. To remove a Reaction, tap and hold the message and hit the emoji again.

Mentions, meanwhile, should prove a lot more useful, but potentially more annoying too.

Designed primarily for group conversations, it allows you to directly notify any of your friends when you feel the need to urgently tell them something.

If you’re mentioned by a friend, you’ll receive a new kind of notification telling you that you’ve been called out specifically.

However, Messenger also includes the option to turn off Mention notifications, presumably because Facebook anticipates some users abusing it in a bid to annoy people.

To mention a friend in a Messenger conversation, type the “@” symbol and enter the first few letters of their name or nickname, select them from the list, and write your message.

“The introduction of Reactions and Mentions within Messenger is the latest update within the app to make group conversations better than ever,” said Facebook.

“Not only will people be able to react to conversations faster using our Messenger emojis, the update also allows people to catch individuals' attention when using group chat. We are hoping that this launch will make conversations on the Messenger app more fun and useful!”

Both Reactions and Mentions have already started rolling out, and Facebook says they’ll be available globally in the coming days.

They’ll also be available to use on Work Chat in Workplace, the company’s business-focused social network.