Facebook is the social network used daily by millions of users around the world. The most common ways to use this platform are through its official app, in the case of using it from the mobile, or from the web when accessing it from a PC. However, Microsoft has wanted to change this with the arrival of Windows 10 . The new universal application platform intends that this operating system can be used through “apps”, as if it were a mobile phone. And, although developers have been reluctant to launch their apps within this platform, it seems that little by little they are encouraged. And the last to arrive has been this social network.
If we are Facebook users, and we like Windows 10 apps , surely we have been using the first universal application of this social network for a long time. Facebook for Windows 10 was a fairly heavy, low-quality app, very slow, and often outdated. Instead of being web-based, this app was based on Facebook’s own API, which would stop working imminently. For this reason, the company decided last February 2020 to discontinue its app for Windows 10 and remove it from the store.
The most understandable thing is that Facebook would have forgotten its app for Windows 10 and focused its efforts on improving the web and continuing to develop mobile apps. However, luckily, this has not been the case. The company has just launched a new application to be able to consult the social network without having to do it from the browser. A modern and highly optimized PWA application that will breathe new life into this platform.
The new Facebook app for Windows 10
This new PWA application is identical to the web that we can load from our browser. All the elements and all the functions and tools will be at our fingertips from it. We can read all the publications, see our notifications, search and follow people, share comments, photos and videos, start a chat … absolutely the same as we can do from the browser. We can even activate the operating system notifications.
In addition, thanks to the fact that it is a PWA (that is, a web application), all the news that reaches the social network page will be available in the app itself without having to update it.
Download
At the beginning of March, this new app appeared for the first time in the Microsoft Store, the Windows 10 store. This PWA reached users in the testing phase, “beta”, since it was the first version of it and could have performance, stability, or functionality issues.
After a trial period, the company has considered that this new app is ready to reach all users. And so it has just released the final version of the Facebook PWA for Windows 10 , which all users can download for free. The only requirement is that we have the build 19003, or higher, of the operating system installed (that is, one of the versions from 2020 onwards).
This is a very light app, and, being PWA, it runs on Edge‘s Chromium engine . Of course, we cannot install extensions to improve the Facebook social network or to control the privacy of our data. A small price to pay for having the comfort of being able to use this social network as if it were just another app for the operating system.
Users who want to go a bit ahead can still download the “beta” version of this app.
