Layout broken on macOS 11 (though it's probably Facebook's fault)

[elsiehupp]

RSMS Messenger currently looks like this for me:

Basically, it's missing a number of interface elements, probably due to a change in Facebook's HTML.

[frozenpandaman]

Is there a fork of this that's kept up to date, by chance? FB's official Messenger app is often broken, too, and so bloated.

[elsiehupp]

I haven't clicked through to check all of the forks (there are a lot of them), but if you find one that's been updated more recently, feel free to share it here!

[Calorion]

It's not just macOS 11. Here it is in El Capitan:

And unfortunately Goofy is dead too. Does anyone know of a current client that's compatible with El Cap?

[elsiehupp]

You could try one or another of the various “single-site browser” applications available. Some options include:

• Unite
• Fluid
• Flotato
• Coherence
• Chromeless

In addition, you can use an application like Choosy as your default browser and set it up so that messenger.com links always open in your custom Messenger app.

The different options above vary by price and features, as well as whether they support Safari and/or Chrome extensions. You might want to play around with the demo/trial versions of each of them to see which best suits your needs.

As for an actual Facebook Messenger client… as best I know, the official one is the main game in town, and it’s only kind of wonky at this point. And IIRC the reason RSMS Messenger stopped getting maintained is that the author got hired by Facebook to work on the official Facebook Messenger instead.

Looking through the Mac App Store, there’s another option called ChatMate that looks nice (and it more closely emulates the appearance of the Apple Message app), but I don’t have any experience with it myself, so I can’t really comment on it. It’s only 99¢, though, so it’s fairly low-stakes to try out.

[elsiehupp]

I just downloaded ChatMate. It seems almost indistinguishable from RSMS Messenger (and it doesn’t support Dark Mode). The easiest thing would just be to use the official Facebook Messenger app for macOS (which does support Dark Mode). The various single-site browsers would mainly be useful if you want to use browser extensions.

[Calorion]

After some searching, I downloaded Caprine, and it seems to be working fine so far.

[frozenpandaman]

After some searching, I downloaded Caprine, and it seems to be working fine so far.

Thank you for this @Calorion!

[Calorion]

I haven't clicked through to check all of the forks (there are a lot of them), but if you find one that's been updated more recently, feel free to share it here!

I've discovered a better way: https://github.com/rsms/fb-mac-messenger/network/

[elsiehupp]

I've discovered a better way: https://github.com/rsms/fb-mac-messenger/network/

Oh, cool! That’s definitely better than a flat list. And thanks for the recommendation!

[elsiehupp]

I just emailed the maintainer to ask him about the project's current development status:

From: Elsie Hupp <redacted>
Subject: RSMS Messenger Project Status?
Date: September 10, 2021 at 6:51:06 AM EDT
To: Rasmus Andersson <[email protected]>

Hi Rasmus,

I used your Facebook Messenger app for macOS for many years, until it abruptly stopped working, around the time the official Facebook Messenger app was released.

I opened a GitHub issue at the time:

https://github.com/rsms/fb-mac-messenger/issues/455

It appears that the application hasn’t seen a new release since 2015 (!), though there are commits and tags well into 2017.

If you’ve moved on from this project and don’t anticipate having any further releases, could you:

(a) update the README as well as the release page (fbmacmessenger.rsms.me) to indicate that the project is no longer under active development (and should not be considered the primary fork on GitHub),
(b) in the same places, possibly designate one or more recommended alternatives (forks and unrelated projects) for users to try instead, and
(c) mark the repository as “archived” on GitHub.

Does this sound like an appropriate course of action? If so, could you do something like this? If not, could you suggest an alternative course of action that you might take instead?

The main issue here not that the application is broken; the main issue here is the lack of clarity around whether it will ever get fixed.

Thanks!

Sincerely,
Elsie Hupp

So hopefully we’ll hear back!