Four months after the launch of Facebook Home, which aimed to turn every Android phone into the long-rumored Facebook Phone, the company is starting to bring certain Home features into their primary app with an update today. In other words, bits and pieces of Home are coming to the main app… without requiring anyone to actually download Home.
The first feature to make the jump to the main app is Home’s Cover Feed, which lets you replace Android’s default lockscreen with one that brings in photos and posts from your Facebook news feed.
While it’s always been possible to use Cover Feed while disabling other aspects of Home, you still had to at least download Home to do it. Not anymore.
Not crossing over to the main app just yet is the namesake Home launcher (a Facebook-centric overhaul to Android’s core interface, its homescreen) and their platform-wide floaty-head messenger notifications system, Chat Heads. With that said, you can get Chat Heads without downloading Home — it’s built into the Android port of Facebook’s Messenger app.
So the only thing that’s really left to Home as a standalone app is the launcher, which has never really seemed to prove all that popular. For those who do dig the Home launcher, though, three new devices are getting supported as of today: the HTC One, the Nexus 4, and the Samsung Galaxy S4.
Facebook has long used standalone apps as test beds for features, letting the early-adopter audience deal with all the kinks before throwing it at the millions of users who’d never care to go beyond the main Facebook app. In the test case of Home, it would seem that the only thing not making the cut so far is… well, Home.
The update will start rolling out to Android users today.