The Instagram persistent menu is a short menu of a business's main options that stays available in its DM conversations. Each entry either sends the business a message, which can start an automation, or opens a link.
The Instagram persistent menu is a short menu of your main options that stays available in a contact's DM conversation with your business. Contacts open it from the menu icon (☰) in the chat. Each entry either sends you a message or opens a link.
Meta's docs list two kinds of entry:
After a postback tap, Meta opens the standard messaging window, and you have 24 hours to reply (Meta for Developers, persistent menu, updated July 2, 2026). Meta recommends 5 entries at most. You cannot tailor it to one contact, and it does not update live: open conversations show your changes after a refresh, new ones at once.
In Inrō, the two kinds are labelled "Send a message" and "Open a link", under "When tapped". Keep labels short: "Book a call" reads better in the menu than a full sentence.
A "Send a message" tap arrives in Inrō as a DM from the contact, with the entry's label as its text. To answer it:
The scenario then works like your comment-to-DM automations: send a link, ask a question or file the contact in a folder. If no scenario starts, the AI agent that answers your DMs can reply to the tap, depending on its settings. An "Open a link" entry starts no automation.
On the Scenarios page, open the Manage persistent menu card and click Settings. You add, rename and remove entries there, with a preview of the menu.
The menu lives on Instagram, not in Inrō. Inrō reads it from Instagram each time, so changes made by another connected app show up too. You can also edit it from an AI assistant through the Inrō MCP server.
When opt-out detection is on, Inrō can add an unsubscribe entry with the label you choose, and it counts as one of your menu entries; see DM opt-out.
The menu is not the same as icebreakers, the questions shown when someone opens a new chat with you. More terms are in the Inrō glossary of Instagram automation.
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