In fact, Messenger’s engineers have been steadily stripping features out of it, like the Discover tab, which the company confirmed it was axing last week. (Separately, Facebook notes some features may be “temporarily unavailable,” but no word yet on which specific capabilities may be affected.)

More importantly, the redesign lays important groundwork for other big changes that will fundamentally change the way you use Messenger, namely Facebook’s plan to bring all of its messaging into a single experience. The company also suggests that the new version helps move the app a little closer toward its goal of adding encryption to Messenger chats by default, though it’s unclear exactly how. For now, those remain longer term goals. Zuckerberg has made clear that cross-app messaging isn’t coming any time soon, and the company recently confirmed its encryption plans are still years away.