Facebook Messenger’s end-to-encrypted (E2EE) chats will soon be updated with several features and improvements, including personalised chat themes, customised chat emoji and reactions, group profile photos, according to the company. End-to-end encrypted chats add an extra layer of security and protection to the contents and calls of a chat, protecting them from any third parties, including internet service providers and Facebook. While Facebook has offered E2EE chat support for years, the company is expanding the ability to encrypt chats by default to more Messenger users ahead of a wider rollout expected in the coming months.

According to the announcement by Meta, features like personalised chat themes, customised chat emojis, and reactions, group profile photos, link previews, active status and Chat Bubbles on Android are being rolled out for Messenger’s E2EE chats. The social media platform has shared that it has started the global testing of end-to-end encrypted chats on Messenger.

The default end-to-end encryption is expected to be rolled out to Messenger users globally in the coming months. The tech giant said that users will start seeing some of their chats being end-to-end encrypted by default. It also added that Messenger users will be notified of E2EE support in individual chat threads.

Meta’s WhatsApp already offers E2EE-enabled chats by default. Meanwhile, Instagram, like Messenger, lets users choose E2EE for individual conversations. Users on Instagram can choose which chats they want to be end-to-end encrypted.

End-to-end encryption brings an additional layer of security and protection to the contents within a chat. These conversations are only accessible to the sender and the receiver, and no third-party, not even Facebook itself, can access the messages sent by users.

However, the sender or the receiver of an end-to-end encrypted message or call can always share it with someone else outside of the conversation. Aside from chat messages, images, videos and other attachments on an E2EE chat are also secured and can only be accessed by the participants of the chats, according to the company.