• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 28, 2016

It what is surely music to Microsoft’s ears, Facebook is finally launching some updated Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram apps for Windows 10.

“These new apps will load quickly and easily within Windows and have the most up-to-date features,” Davis Fields, Product Manager at Facebook, promises in a new blog post.

For Windows 10 users, Facebook is now one click away from their Start Menu, while the app will now start and load their News Feed faster than before.

Additional new features include Reactions, stickers in comments, desktop notifications, and the ability to pin a new Facebook Live Tile, which displays recent updates from friends, family and followed Pages.

“Instagram also supports Live Tiles, so if you pin the app to your home screen you’ll get notifications from Instagram right on your start screen,” according to Tuula Rytilä, Corporate Vice President of Windows Marketing at Microsoft.

For social giants, syncing with the latest Windows is key to maximizing user reach and engagement. Twitter unveiled a similar update, in mid-March.

Big as it is, however, Windows 10 has not grown as fast as expected. In January -- five months after its official release -- Microsoft’s operating system hadn’t even passed 10% market share.

Over the next couple of years, Microsoft is reportedly aiming for 1 billion devices -- including PCs, smartphones, and consoles -- to be running Windows 10.

Facebook’s latest updates come help Microsoft’s cause. In particular, speedier load times are now critical to engaging mobile consumers. Indeed, 63% of news consumers cited fast load times as most important to them, according to a nationally representative survey conducted earlier this year by the Media Insight Project and funded by the American Press Institute.