Messenger has brought a new in-stream display for multiple photos, kind of similar to its Shared Album feature, but will now be available in all chats.
now, when you attach a bunch of photos in the chat, they will appear as a row of thumbnails in-stream. If someone taps on them, participants in the chat will see an expanded view of all the images, and they will be able to expand those photos, as well as like and comment directly from the expanded view.
Which, as noted above, is the same format that Messenger introduced for Shared Albums in group chats in April this year.
The primary upgrade in that case was the ability of all group chat participants to upload pictures to the shared album. Now, however, Meta is applying the same display format to all multi-image displays, which means that users have gotten accustomed to this format well in group chats, and meta now values this display more in a wider context.

This is a pretty intuitive update, and it will help to engage people with images in the chat. It will also make the image displays within Messenger more universal with every element, which will help maximize interactions.

And with most social interaction switching to messaging apps instead of social platforms, it seems prudent for Meta to hone its options in this regard to encourage Messenger usage.

It is a simple tweak, which, as noted above, pretty much replicates an existing function, but it is one that is helpful to many users.

The new image update is being rolled out from this week in the latest version of the app.