Hands On With Facebook Chat Heads for iPhone and iPad

Christina Warren2013-04-16 20:25:47 UTC

Facebook just updated its iOS app to version 6.0, adding support for chat heads and a new news feed.

Chat heads debuted with Facebook Home last week and are available to all Android users as part of the Facebook Messenger app. The idea behind chat heads are to allow users to keep a running list of conversations going without having to stop what they are doing and switch apps.

While on Android, chat heads can exist as a layer within every app, on iOS, the experience is limited to being inside Facebook for iPhone or iPad. That takes away some of the joy of chat heads — namely the ability to have a persistent conversation no matter what you're doing on your device. Still, chat heads are great for users that spend a lot of time in the Facebook app and may want to carry on several chats without having to be tied to the messaging view itself.

On iOS, chat heads really shine on the iPad. The extra screen real estate makes the multi-tasking concept really sing. As with the Android app, users can move chat heads around the app to get out of the way and can also dismiss notifications and chats by just flicking the icons to the bottom of the screen.

In addition to chat heads, the iPhone version of Facebook was also updated to include the new News Feed. Users can choose specific content to view — including photos, music and games — rather than merely viewing all stories at once.

Chat heads aren't available to all Facebook for iOS users — the company says it will be rolling out the feature to everyone in the coming weeks. What do you think of the new Facebook for iOS? Let us know in the comments.

Images by Mashable

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