Astro For Mac

Astro is a a sleek and easy-to-use Facebook chat client that enables you to converse with your Facebook friends from the comfort of your desktop. The app supports smileys, file attachments, different themes and includes a screen capturing utility.

Operating Astro is simple, as the main window is intuitively designed. On the left pane, you can access the friends list, the central area displays the conversation and the lower area is the chat box. All these panes can be easily resized with a drag and drop.

Just like in the browser based version of Facebook, Astro displays the online contacts (if you are online), the date of the last conversation, the avatars of friends and the conversation history. It is also simple to remove contacts from the list with a click on the “Archive” button.

In addition to this, Astro has the advantage of supporting group chat that can be easily initiated in the “New Conversation” window, where you can manually browse friends to add to a chat or find them using a simple search box.

As mentioned before, one benefit of using Astro is that it allows you to capture the screen and share the picture instantly via the chat box. Screenshots can be created using a crosshair (by click-dragging it) and you can even insert annotations, such as arrows, before saving and sharing the snapshot.

The application also offers a decent set of preferences regarding the keyboard shortcuts to show the chat window and the screen capturing tool, changing the chat theme, font scale and message sending method, as well as the notification types.

To wrap up, Astro is a versatile and elegant desktop port for the Facebook chat. Messages are sent without a problem and the amount of options bundled in the app might satisfy the needs of most Facebook users.