After several months of silence, Meta has made a major update to its Messenger app, focusing on sharing and photos

For some time, sharing on Meta's Messenger app has been hampered by quality issues Photos are sent scrambled, as if they were taken with a 2008 flip phone

The most significant update is the ability to send HD photos in Messenger chats; according to Meta, this update will allow users to send "clearer, crisper photos" in conversations

Select an image in the chat composer and toggle the HD option on before hitting send This way you can select multiple images and set them to send in HD This is an extra step, but will ensure that a clearer picture is shared each time

It's been quite some time since shared albums became all the rage on Facebook, but Meta is bringing the feature to Messenger

To create a shared album, select multiple photos in the chat composer and tap Create Album; according to Meta, you can also long-press on a photo and tap Create Album when it pops up Otherwise, you can select a photo and add it to an existing album

Once an album is created in chat, anyone in the group can view, add, delete, or download media from that album

Although not yet available, Meta indicates that tapping on the group chat and clicking on media will allow the album to be viewed later Again, this feature is not available as of this writing

The new update allows users to add contacts without entering a number or name Instead, they can go into "Settings" and tap the QR code icon to have the person scan your code They can also tap "Share" to send a link

Finally, another highlight of this update is the ability to send files up to 100 MB; according to Meta, all major file formats are supported, including Word Docs, PDF, and Excel files

Simply tap the + button in chat and select the file you wish to send

For example, Gmail still only allows you to send 25MB files via email, so anything that allows you to send large files without third parties or links is a pretty useful feature