Meta could shut down Facebook/Instagram cross-app messaging this year

The social media giant Meta may pull the plug on the cross-app messaging support between Instagram and Messenger apps. A leaked screenshot shared by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi suggests the said change could arrive in the month of October this year.

"After mid-October, you will no longer be able to chat with Facebook friends on Instagram, so this chat will become read-only. Start a new chat on Messenger or Facebook to continue the conversation," the screenshot reads.

Back in 2020, Meta allowed Instagram users to message their friends on Facebook and Messenger without leaving the Instagram app and vice-versa. In addition, several features from the Messenger app also trickled down to the Instagram app such as the ability to reply to a particular message, forward a message, customizable chat colors, etc.

To text someone on Messenger, go to your Instagram Chats page and type their name in the search box. You can find the desired contact under the "Facebook Friends" heading. Similarly, you can search for your Instagram friends in the Messenger app as well.

You can configure how the cross-app integration works for you. For instance, you can choose whether messages from people contacting you via Messenger should go to your Instagram Chats or Message requests.

Over the years, Meta has made several attempts to integrate the two social media apps. In addition to texting users, you can also share Stories, Posts, and Reels across Instagram and Facebook. For that, you can add your respective Facebook and Instagram accounts to the Meta Accounts Center to enable the integration.

In recent news, it was reported that Instagram is working on the ability to disable Seen Status as a measure to boost privacy on the app. The social media platform is also testing a feature that will allow an entire group to be tagged at once.