Some time ago Instagram integrated its private messages feature with Messenger. One of the improvements introduced within these changes was the possibility of reacting to Instagram’s private messages with emoji icons. If you are reading this text, this feature is probably not working for you (as for many peoples too). In this article, we’ll look at this problem more deeply.
How to react to messages on Instagram?
To react to messages on Instagram with emojis first, you need to update messaging in your app, but first, you need to check if this feature is available in your country.
How to check if emoji reactions are available in your country?
To check this visit the official Instagram Help Center page. This page automatically detects your location and tells you if this feature is available in your country.
https://help.instagram.com/798400980929927
Integration was enabled worldwide in September 2020, but a few months later (in December 2020), Facebook Meta disabled this integration in Europe due to new rules for messaging services in European Union. In short, EU law doesn’t allow to share of private messages between services (Instagram and Messenger) without user’s agreement.
How to enable emoji reactions if this feature is available in my country?
If you checked that Instagram and Messenger integration is available in your country and you still can’t react to private messages with emojis, you probably need to update your app to enable this feature.
- Open Instagram app
- Go to your profile by clicking the profile icon in the right-bottom corner
- Go to settings by clicking three lines icon (also known as hamburger icon) in the right-top corner
- Click “Settings”
- Click on “Update messaging” button at the top of the menu and follow the instructions
What can I do if this feature isn’t available in my country?
Unfortunately, if this feature is not available in your country, there is no way to enable it. There was some hack, posted on Reddit, about how to force this integration through video call, but this workaround is already patched (you can find it at this link if you want to try). There is no other known solution to enable this feature. VPN, reinstalling the app, updating, changing to professional profile – all these ideas not working. The only thing you can do is wait until Meta provides a solution to meet European Union law, regarding sharing private messages across different platforms.
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