Facebook Messenger has begun rolling out new features aimed at making its platform easier to use.

The Meta-owned social media app is planning to roll out new productivity and chat reminder features, an integrated payments feature and keyboard shortcuts for smartphone users.

People using Messenger will be able to address everyone in their group chat by typing ‘@everyone’. The app already allows users to address a specific person in the chat, but the Messenger team said that the feature is being introduced so users can issue chat-wide ‘reminders’ to their friends.

According to a blog post written by the Messenger team, the new @everyone feature can be used for “group reminders, impromptu get-togethers or when you need to gather the brain trust to crowdsource an answer to a time-sensitive question.”

The app also lets people in different time zones mute each other’s message notifications using the keyboard shortcut /silent. The function is also available on Meta-owned Instagram as @silent.

The @everyone and /silent shortcuts are available to all Messenger users on iOS and Android devices.

Users in the US will, in the coming weeks, be able to send and receive payments in their one-on-one chats in Messenger. The /pay shortcut will be introduced to US Android and iOS Facebook Messenger users.

The /gif, /shrug and /tableflip keyboard shortcuts will be introduced in the future to iOS users of Messenger. The gif shortcut means users can find their chosen gifs more conveniently, while the /shrug and /tableflip functions are throwbacks to text-based emoticons, for when “a gif can’t compare to the emotions conveyed by the old-school text-based tableflip (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ and shrug “¯_(ツ)_/¯ emoticons.”

The company addressed its users, describing the rollout as “a new command system to help supercharge your messaging efficiency and add a little extra fun to your experience.”

“Messenger’s new shortcuts will get you there in the shortest number of keystrokes.”

The blog post by the Messenger team also said that more shortcuts would be unveiled later this year. Last August, Facebook Messenger introduced fully encrypted voice and video calls to its users.

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