How does Instagram, Facebook Messenger's cross-messaging work?

Recently, Facebook began rolling out its new functionality in India that merges Instagram’s direct messages (DM) with Facebook Messenger app.

With the new feature, Instagram users can send messages to contacts on the Facebook Messenger without the leaving app and vice versa.

For Instagram:

Go to Settings from the more option on the right-hand side.

Select the Privacy option.

Tap on the Messages option and adjust the settings from here

For Messenger:

Open Messenger.

Go to Privacy under Preferences.

Select Message Delivery.

Under potential connections select from your followers on Instagram

Select Chats under the Deliver Requests option.

If users opt for the cross-messaging feature, the DM icon at the top right corner of Instagram will get replaced with the Messenger icon. It is important to note that users can opt-out from the messages-merger feature by simply selecting “not now” during the initial setup.

The integration also brings 10 features, that were previously exclusive to Facebook Messenger, to the Instagram app.

The update is available on both Android and iOS versions of the apps and to use the cross-messaging feature, users will have to update either of the apps from the respective app stores.