Every Instagram messaging API change from the past year, in one place
Reactions, quoted replies, PDFs, multi-image messages, typing indicators, the end of the share attachment and the Handover Protocol — what Meta changed for Instagram DMs and what it means for your inbox.
Meta has shipped a steady stream of changes to Instagram messaging since autumn 2025. Most make business DMs feel more like the Instagram app itself; a few retire older behaviour that integrations relied on. Here is the timeline from Meta’s Messenger Platform changelog, which covers Instagram Direct.
New capabilities
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| Sep 10, 2025 | Webhook for edited messages (message_edit) |
| Sep 23, 2025 | Typing indicators and “seen” (mark_seen) sender actions on Instagram |
| Oct 6, 2025 | Quoted replies (reply_to) appear in webhooks and the Conversations API |
| Oct 21, 2025 | Moderate Conversations API — block or unblock people, move chats to spam |
| Nov 3, 2025 | Several images in one message (beta at first) |
| Dec 2, 2025 | Add, change and remove reactions through the Send API |
| Dec 19, 2025 | PDF attachments, and replying to a specific message |
| Mar 13, 2026 | Images can be sent by attachment ID — upload once, reuse for many recipients |
| Mar 26, 2026 | Shared posts and reels arrive as ig_post and ig_reel attachments |
Things that were retired
- Handover Protocol (Oct 23, 2025) — no longer supported for Instagram; businesses were moved to Conversation Routing for sharing threads between apps.
- share attachment for shared posts (Apr 27, 2026) — replaced by ig_post. Tools still reading share show a bare link or nothing at all.
- Three message tags (Apr 27, 2026) — CONFIRMED_EVENT_UPDATE, ACCOUNT_UPDATE and POST_PURCHASE_UPDATE now return error 100. The Human Agent tag was not part of this retirement.
If your inbox tool shows a long lookaside.fbsbx.com link where a customer shared a reel or post, it hasn’t caught up with the ig_post / ig_reel attachment types. The link points at the media itself and should be rendered as a photo or video.
AI arrives in business DMs
On June 3, 2026 Meta announced Business Agent — an AI that answers product questions from a business’s catalogue, books appointments and qualifies leads across WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, with a hand-off to people when needed. It launched free for a first group of businesses, with paid tiers expected. Whatever tool you use, decide early which conversations an AI may answer and when a person takes over.
What ThreadWave already supports
- Shared and tagged reels, posts and stories shown as the actual media, labelled Reel, Post or Story.
- Edited and unsent messages kept in sync; customer reactions shown on the message.
- Typing indicator and “seen” sent when your agent opens and answers the chat.
- Sent, delivered and seen status on every reply.