Facebook has revealed a new version of Messenger that has been rebuilt "from the ground up", according its engineers.
The app will now load twice as fast and use a quarter of the space, the company claimed.
The rebuild will also mean that "a few features will be temporarily unavailable", Facebook said. It is working to bring those features back "soon", it said.
Facebook said the Messenger app had become increasingly burdened with features since it launched in 2011, with the addition of video calls, moving GIFs and more. But those features had made the app "increasingly complex" for both its users and the phones that run it, it said.
The new version of Messenger came from what it referred to as "Project LightSpeed", under which it looked to simplify and redesign the app.
It will start rolling out to iOS users "over the next few weeks", it said.
The redesign was done with a particular focus on those users who are on older phones or slower connections, to ensure they can chat without technical issues, wrote Raymond Endred, vice president of engineering for Messenger.
Mr Endred also said that the new version of the app "lays the foundation" for Facebook's plans to bring its messaging apps together, allowing users to chat between Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram.
