You’ll soon be able to see your Messenger chats as a widget on Windows

Developers are now able to create widgets for their apps on Windows 11 and the first third-party one to hit your screen is…from Meta?

In a blog post, Microsoft announced the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25284. The company noted that, with the release of the Windows App SDK 1.2 back in November of last year, developers can now build widgets for their apps.

With the release of Windows App SDK 1.2 developers are now able to create widgets for their apps. Users can access these experiences on their Windows 11 widgets board in current Dev Channel Insider Preview builds.

In a surprise announcement, the company revealed that users of the new Preview Build could try out a new widget for Messenger, Meta’s messaging app that is used by both Facebook and Instagram.

Ready to try out a new widget? The Messenger app now has a preview version of its widget available. To give it a try, go to the Microsoft Store and update to the latest version of Messenger. Then open the widgets board and navigate to the widgets picker by clicking the “+” button at the top-right of the board to pin your widget.

The new Preview Build also addresses a number of bugs affecting the taskbar, windowing, and more.

Today’s news comes a day after Meta announced that it was bringing a ton of the core messaging experience to end-to-end encrypted chats on the service. The company is now adding link previews, custom emojis, themes, and more to those messages.

Microsoft and Meta have been working with each other in other areas as well. Microsoft recently announced that it would be bringing the Microsoft 365 suite to the Meta Quest Pro in the future, looking to Meta as part of the company’s play to bring productivity to virtual reality.