Starting today, you can access a whole new Star Wars theme on Facebook Messenger. This includes a chat theme, reactions, stickers, and AR effects, all of which remind us of how great the Star Wars trilogy was and still is.
No one’s ever really gone…
Rey’s journey continues and the Skywalker saga concludes in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, coming December 2019.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s release is just a week away, bringing the end of both Disney’s modern sequel trilogy and the overarching episodic Skywalker Saga.
But if you can’t wait that long, Disney has partnered with Facebook to create a cool new set of Star Wars-themed features for Messenger users.
Earlier this year, Facebook rolled out its new design and announced its own cryptocurrency. Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg really wants to “mark” (see what I did there?) 2019 as the year of Facebook by surprising users with a brand new theme for the Messenger app.
How to Turn on Star Wars Theme in Messenger
Designed in partnership with Disney, the features bring the Star Wars galaxy to your very own Messenger chats. You’ll have new themes, emojis, and stickers – including an interesting, starry background theme for your message threads.
The reactions and stickers allow you to express yourself using all of your favorite Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker characters, from both sides of the Force. You can laugh like Finn, act surprised like Rey, cry like C-3PO, act angry like Kylo or give a BB-8 thumbs up or a Stormtrooper thumbs down.
Turning on the Star Wars theme in Messenger is super easy. Here’s what you need to do:
1 Open a Messenger thread.
2 Tap the name of the thread at the top (typically the name or names of those you’re chatting with at the top of the screen). This will open the thread settings.
3 In the thread setting, select Theme. You’ll see the Star Wars chat theme right at the first spot. And there you have it, a beautiful, outer space Star Wars theme for your Messenger.
However, this Star Wars theme is only available in the new version of Messenger. So, if you find yourself unable to turn on these features, be sure to update your Messenger application.
Limited-Edition AR effects
Here comes the main element of the update: the AR effects.
Aside from the themes, emojis, and stickers, Facebook also added a new set of AR effects. From left to right are:
- The Dark vs Light Effect, which allows you to choose your side in the battle of the Force.
- Next to that, you have the Cockpit Effect, where you’ll be able to see yourself as part of the Resistance, gliding through the galaxies in Poe Dameron’s X-Wing.
- The third one, the Lightspeed Effect, will let you jump into hyperspace and travel to a whole new world.
You can use these AR effects in Messenger video calls or post to Messenger Stories. This also means you can use them in your Facebook stories and Instagram Stories (by saving and re-posting the video).
All the features are free to use.
The new Star Wars features are rolling out today, December 12, to Messenger. All of them are free and available for all Messenger users.
This is not the first time Disney has teamed up with a major media platform to promote the Star Wars franchise.
Back in 2015, Disney partnered with Google to produce a built-in tool that lets users theme their apps, including Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps Chrome and others with either a Light Side or Dark Side effect. That same year, Facebook users could change their profile picture to a Star Wars-themed photo where they posed with a red Dark Side cross-guard lightsaber or a Light Side blue one.
In 2017, Google launched an AR Stickers app with a set of licensed Star Wars characters to promote Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Apple joined the force with a set of new Selfie Scenes, including those for the Millennium Falcon and Mega-Destroyer, also from The Last Jedi in the updated version of its Clips app.
These collaborations do not just speed up the marketing scheme of Disney, but they also benefit the other parties. Let’s take this new Star Wars theme for example. Through this partnership, Disney gets to market its new movie to more than one billion Messenger users. Meanwhile, the new themes and AR effects increase users’ engagement, making Messenger even more popular than it already is.
Anyway, shout out to the new Star Wars-Themed Messenger Features.
May the force be with you!