Facebook Messenger Lite: Site launches secret version of chat app that is cheaper and easier to use

The app strips out all the rubbish and lets you chat cheaply and easily

There's a hidden, much better version of Facebook Messenger. And you probably want to start using it straight away.

Facebook has made its Messenger Lite app available in more countries, allowing everyone to use the slimmed-down, faster and more efficient version of its app.

The light version works by getting rid of many of the extra, mostly useless parts of the app, like Facebook Stories and gifs. In so doing, it cuts out the most intensive things that run when Messenger is open, allowing users to save space, use less data and generally avoid the many additional features that have made their way into Messenger recently.

There are of course some downsides, including the fact that all of the more advanced features won't work properly. But your account will still have access to those, you just won't be able to use them through the light version of the app.

Facebook Messenger Lite is now available to most people with an Android phone, though there's still no iOS version. It can be downloaded as normal, through the Google Play Store, and you can keep both the light and full-sized version of the app on your phone if you wish.

There are three main reasons to use the app.

It requires far less data, making it cheaper and easier to use on expensive or bad connections. The code powering the app is slimmed down, and it also can't receive big files like photos or gifs, meaning that those things won't tax your data connection either.

For similar reasons, and because it was originally envisaged as a tool for emerging markets, it has been built to run on as many devices as possible. So even old and unsupported phones will be able to run Messenger Lite, unlike the far more exclusive full-fat Messenger app.

And finally, it strips out many of the extra features that have been added to Facebook Messenger in recent years. Since it has been reduced only to a chat app, it doesn't have features like Facebook's personal assistant or it's new Snapchat-like selfie lenses.

The app comes after Facebook banned people from using Messenger on its website, which was the previous way to get a smaller, lighter version of the app. That decision was little explained at the time, and appeared to motivated by forcing people to download Facebook's apps and so give them more access to their phone.