Although there are many other social networks used by the mass public, Facebook is still one of the kings in many countries. A service that a large number of people use to communicate with their family, loved ones or even meet people. You can do this through the normal posts on the wall, from groups or, if you want a more fluid and private communication, using the Messenger service. But of course, what you surely did not know is that the Facebook is hiding messages from us of this service for years without our knowledge. Today we explain how you can locate that "hidden tray" of messages.
How can I see hidden messages on Facebook?
Although this seems to be another one of those stories in which Mark Zuckerberg's company performs one of its tricks, this time it is something they do for our good. As you already know, this messaging service that Facebook incorporates allows us to immediately contact someone even if they are on the other side of the world. A notification will simply arrive on the device where you are using it and you will be able to reply to us.
Said user may be our friend or family member and we simply want to know how they are doing or ask them any personal details. But of course, there are also a lot of other users who use the Facebook Messenger service with disreputable claims: selling us things, hacking accounts, harassing users who are not their friends, and much more. For this reason, by and for our better user experience and security, let's say this social network "mute" these messages and sends them to a kind of hidden folder. Something like a Spam folder but without actually being it.
These messages have been accumulating there for days, months or even years. But of course, like all services that are carried out automatically and without the review by a natural person, this system can have errors. Therefore, it is possible that in this tray of hidden messages you will find some other that, really, should not be here. So that friend who got angry with you because you hadn't answered him, while you only knew how to tell him that you hadn't received anything from him, he may have been right.
In order to find this folder of messages that Facebook did not notify us of, we will have to follow one route or another depending on the device from which we want to access Messenger.
Hidden messages in Messenger from the browser
If you want to locate these messages through the navigator (which can be Chrome, Safari, Opera or any) you will only have to follow these steps:
- Sign in to your Facebook account as you normally would. Since Messenger is a service that is included through the browser, you will not need to install anything new.
- Once inside, locate the Facebook Messenger icon in the upper right corner. Now press to enter it.
- Now you will see that all your old conversations from this service have been displayed. On them, at the top, you will see different options among which is the typical 3-point menu. Click on it.
- Here are different options that allow us to control the chat settings. Among them you will see one called "Message Requests". Enter here.
A new menu will automatically be displayed that, probably, you have never seen before. This window is that "hidden tray" of the messages that Facebook had filtered to prevent any malicious from arriving through Messenger.
Hidden messages in Messenger from mobile
In case you want to access Messenger from mobile phone, the truth is that getting to this “hidden menu” is much simpler and more intuitive:
- Install the Facebook Messenger app on your phone and access it with your account on this social network.
- Now, once on the screen with all the conversations, click on the icon of your photo in the upper left corner. This will take you to the Messenger settings.
- Here, among the first options that appear, you have to locate "Message requests" and enter it.
With these simple steps you will have reached that tray in which Facebook hid some of the messages that came to Messenger. Now, surely, you are wondering what you can or should do with them. We show you that in the next section.
What to do with the "hidden messages" of Messenger?
Now, with each of these messages you can do different actions:
- If you look closely, just to the right of the name of the user who sent it to you will appear the time that has passed since he wrote to you.
- Then, if you move the mouse cursor over each one of them, the typical menu of settings or options with the three little dots appears. Click on it to access.
- The first thing we see is the option of "Mark as unread". This, if we activate it, will make the text of this conversation be marked in blue and, in addition, a dot of the same color appears to its right. The reason we do not receive any notification from Facebook Messenger regarding these messages is because the platform automatically detects them as read and stores them in this somewhat hidden folder. So, yes, this really was an important message but you can't attend to it right now.
- We can also see the “Open in Messenger” option in second place. If you have located a message that really should not be identified as spam, just click here to automatically send it to Messenger to continue talking with this person.
- However, if this user does not ring a bell and you want to gossip about it a bit before responding to a stranger lightly, that is what the "View profile" option is for. An action that, as its own name indicates, will reach us directly to the profile of this user.
In the event that we identify that this message is from a complete stranger, arrives with dubious intentions or has been sent to us by mistake, what you should do is:
- Click on the conversation to open it.
- Now, next to the name of said user, click on the down arrow to display the "chat settings". Yes, some new configurations / options different from the previous ones.
- In this section you can, again, send the char to Messenger normally if you wish.
- If it is a message from someone who is bothering us, we can "Block" it with the second option.
- The third alternative that Facebook Messenger shows us is "Delete the chat" so that it disappears completely.
- And, finally, in the event that we want to report the conversation or report an error, we will have to click on "An error has occurred".