Instagram Just Made It Easier To Quickly Reply To Your DMs

This year has been full of updates to Instagram DMs. There’s Vanish Mode which allows you to send messages incognito without saving your chat history. There are new Instagram stickers for most every occasion. But among the fresh and fun new updates are plenty of existing features you may have missed out on. One of those features: quick replies in Instagram messaging.

Quick Replies, if you aren’t familiar, are text shortcuts that allow you to quickly respond to DMs with pre-written messages. The feature has typically been helpful among business accounts. After identifying the most frequently asked questions in their DMs, businesses are able to set a series of quick replies to make answering messages both consistent and quicker. For example, instead of having to type out what their business hours are every time they’re asked via DM, they can start typing “hours” or another relevant shortcut they’ve denoted. Then, they’ll be able to auto-populate with a pre-written message like, “Thanks for reaching out! Our business hours are 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Love you, bye!”

While you can’t set quick replies with a personal account, you can create them through a professional account. It’s free and gives you insights on how your posts are doing, how many followers you’re gaining, etc. Once you’re on your profile, go to Settings and scroll down and you should see a message that says “Switch to Professional Account.” From there, you’ll be able to start saving Quick Replies.

From Your Inbox

You’re able to access and amend your quick replies from a chat thread pretty easily. When composing a message, you should see a plus icon to the right of where you type, next to the icons for photos and stickers. You should see a little chat bubble icon with three dots pop up next to the voice note, image, and sticker icons. Tap that icon to access quick replies.

To save a new quick reply, click the plus icon in the upper-right corner or select “New Quick Reply.”

From Settings

This is the pathway you’ll follow to edit quick replies from your profile: Settings > Business/Creator > Quick Replies. You'll be directed to the same "quick reply" page you can access through your inbox.

From there, all you need to do is tap on the message you want to edit or write a brand new quick reply. Set your shortcut to a single word that's easy to type and relevant to your quick reply message.

Once you save, you'll be able to insert a quick reply simply by typing in your shortcut word. When you type your designated word, a blue chat icon with three dots will pop up. Select that icon and voila! Your quick reply message automatically populates.

Go forth and LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL 😂😂😂💀💀💀 simply by typing "lol".