How do I disable Facebook heads in Messenger?

I hate the Facebook chat heads in Messenger. It’s an odious, arrogant feature that the app switches on by default – imagine if all your messaging apps were so pugnacious. So, here’s how to disable Facebook heads in Messenger. 

To all those lifelong Apple iPhone users who are wondering what I’m talking about, the chat heads look like this:

Well, they don’t always look like my co-writer David, but you get the idea. Receive a message and their avatar appears on your homescreen. Irritating.  

Luckily for you, Apple doesn’t let third parties fiddle with the interface in such a stupid way. So, you can get on with your life and think about securing all the data Facebook holds on you instead.

How to disable Facebook heads on Android

As such, this advice is for Android phone users alone.

If you just want to get rid of a head that’s popped up, it’s simple enough to drag the chat head down to the bottom of the screen where an X in a circle will appear. 

To disable them more permanently, though, you’ll need to launch Facebook Messenger (not the main Facebook app).

At the top right of the screen you should see your photo, or whatever icon you’ve chosen to represent your online self. Tap it and you should see this:

This is your “Me” page. Scroll down until you see the “Chat heads” slider as below:

Swipe to disable it. Job done, until Messenger updates and makes you repeat the whole procedure again.

Read this next: How can I secure my Facebook data?