Facebook updates iOS app with faster events, option to save photos, emphasis on group messages, more

Facebook released an update for its iOS app today with a number of small changes and improvements, including faster loading for events and a way for users to easily save photos from Facebook to their phone.
Events was one of the sections that hadn’t yet been completely rebuilt for speed like the News Feed, photos, messages and other areas have. Now, the main events page and individual events themselves seem to load much quicker. This could lead to more RSVPs and interactions on the event page from mobile now that the product is not so slow.
Now when viewing a photo fullscreen, there’s a new ellipsis icon with options to save the photo, share it or report it. This makes these functions more accessible for users. Previously, a user had to take a screenshot of their phone to save an image, or leave fullscreen view to share or report it.


In this update, Facebook also seems to be testing an emphasis on group messaging with a new group message composer in the messages section and a group chats list in the chat menu. It was possible to start and quickly access group messages before, but this makes the process a bit more efficient, while also reminding users that they can use Facebook for this purpose.

A note in the app’s change log mentions “improved places editing when checking in on iPhone,” but we haven’t noticed any difference yet.

When Facebook first released its latest iOS update on Monday, it included the wrong app icon, but it has since released another version with the correct one.