FB Messenger Chat Heads

[SirCubed]

Is there any way to revert to the original messenger chat heads? The original ones look better and function better than One UI's notification bubbles in my opinion.

Pictures of both the old style and the new one with descriptions are below.

 

The old style which I prefer

This is the older style which would take up the whole screen and the bubbles looked better, and they also remembered where they were last positioned, meaning they would reappear in their last location when a new message came through.

The new style which I dislike

This is the new style that I dislike, which only seems to be with One UI 3 as its now intergrated into the bubble notification settings. The bubbles also don't remember where they last were and will appear in the top left of the screen every time after closing them.

Is there a way to revert to Messenger's chat heads as opposed to One UI's notification bubbles?

[ryamoo]

Unfortunately I don't think there is a way.
I agree with what you've said, I prefer the old ones.
Bubbles so far have been nothing but frustrating from the way they appear, to the way "back" doesn't work properly.

I think Messenger updated to do chat bubbles on this android version, so you'd probably have to try and find an old version of messenger to install from an apk mirror site.
But then you have the issue of the Facebook services bloatware that Samsung won't remove, which will force an update of Messenger.

[MartynaK]

@SirCubed,

Unfortunately, I doubt there is a way to revert to the original Messenger chat heads. If you do not like the current chat heads, I would recommend you to post your suggestion on Play Store app. Then maybe Messenger developers will be able to do something about it. The application is not a native Samsung application, that’s why our developers cannot provide any changes to its look 😕.

[ryamoo]

@MartynaK All apps that use the new "bubbles" appear in the same way though. They all take up the same space as the OP's messenger screenshots, and all behave the same way for screen real estate.

Surely that's an Anroid/OneUI thing?

Things like the bubble position, "popup window" size, location, back button function (doesn't work), should all be related to the Android implementation, not the specific app. 

[SirCubed]

Hey thanks for the reply.

As @ryamoo said, it seems that the new One UI notification bubbles override the native app's chat heads. As it only appears on One UI 3, I have checked against other samsung phones without One UI 3 and they still have the native chat heads. It seems to be One UI 3s notification bubble setting that overrides Messenger's.

[ryamoo]

I think it's that Facebook have updated messenger to use the new Android 11 chat bubbles, and so on OneUI, that's what you get. Not that OneUI3 is over-riding Messenger's chat heads. Messenger has probably removed support for chat heads on Android 11, in favour of Android 11's Bubbles. 

It's still an Android 11/OneUI3 issue though, with the way they're appearing/not-appearing/size issues, etc. 

[GoodKingMort]

you can disable the bubbles in the notification settings. just go to Messenger app info, select notifications and you have the option to enable it disable bubbles. After that, make sure chat heads are enabled within the app.

[SirCubed]

Yeah after a bit more research, it turns out that FB has moved to the bubbles api that comes with Android 11. A bit unfortunate as their chat heads were perfectly fine.

I'll just write a suggestion for some of the things that could be improved on for the bubbles in One UI.

Thanks for the response.

[phoenixtg]

Same issues - Recently Samsung sent an update on Dec 21/20 to my S20.  Afterwards Messenger Chat Heads are not appearing like they use to.  Was a little circle with a red flag beside the FB profile picture, now it pops up and goes into notifications instead and have to click on it to make it pop up as the circle badge but doesn't look the same.  I checked my settings and everything is turned on including the new feature "Bubbles" which replaced the Chat Head title.  I updated all my updates in Google Play, and  even uninstalled and reinstalled Messenger.  So is there any other place in the settings that needs to be reactivated this correctly?  I am at a loss of what I missed or a setting I mistakenly turned off like in privacy settings not realizing it effects the chat heads.   Anyway, any ideas or supply me with all the options to determine where it has been turned off on my cell, would be helpful.  Thanks

[ryamoo]

My attempts at getting used to the bubbles were pointless.

They eventually turn off and just appear as a notification, or for SMS, they appear as an old-style notification even though bubbles were turned on.

I'd been reporting bugs with Bubbles since beta 1, and some were fixed, but persistence issues remained. 

Bubbles don't "remember" their position, they randomly disable, or they just disappear when you tap the bubble. 

I've gone back to Android 10 now - The Android 11 update totally isn't worth bothering with. I don't think there was anything introduced that I liked more than features on Android 10.