How to turn off auto reply on Instagram business account: find the sender first

Step 1: find out who sends the message

An auto reply on Instagram can come from four places. Until you know which one, you risk switching off the wrong thing:

• Meta Business Suite automations: Auto reply, Away message, Frequently asked questions, Custom keywords, Comment to message.
• Frequently asked questions in the app: up to four questions, each with an optional automated response.
• A creator AI: replies written by an AI built in Meta AI Studio, a feature Instagram is rolling out gradually.
• A third-party tool connected to your account: PlugKit, ManyChat or another one.

The quickest test: message yourself from a second account, then comment on one of your posts with the keyword you suspect. Note what arrives, when and in what form. A question offered before you type comes from frequently asked questions; a public reply under your post followed by a DM comes from a comment automation.

Turn off an automation in Meta Business Suite

According to Meta’s Business Help Center, read on 24 October 2026, on desktop:

1. Go to Inbox in Meta Business Suite and check the business portfolio selected in the top-left dropdown.
2. Click Automations to see the list.
3. Switch the automation off with the toggle below Status. To change only its text, click Edit.

Good to know: if you turn on Meta Business Agent, Meta pauses your existing automations, such as away messages and instant replies.

Turn off frequently asked questions in the app

Instagram’s Help Center (read on 24 October 2026) limits frequently asked questions to business and creator accounts. You can add, delete or edit the questions and their automated responses at any time, from your Messages tools, under Frequently asked questions. The Show questions toggle controls whether they appear: switched off, they no longer show.

For a business account that never set up its questions, Instagram may show suggested questions in an inactive chat. The Help Center explains how to turn them off from the business tools and controls in your profile menu.

Turn off your creator AI’s replies

According to Instagram’s Help Center, read on 24 October 2026, this feature is only available in the Instagram mobile app, and you can turn it off in two ways:

• For all chats: from your professional dashboard, open Your AI Settings and turn off the Auto replies toggle.
• For one chat: open the chat settings by tapping the other person’s name, then turn off AI auto replies. The person sees a note saying so at the bottom of the chat.

When you reply yourself, the creator AI pauses, then resumes after a while. To stop it for good, turn it off.

Pause or delete in PlugKit

At PlugKit, every comment-to-DM automation and every sequence has a status, active or paused, and can also be deleted (API reference read on 24 October 2026). An installed playbook can be removed in one go: that deletes the automations and sequences it created, unless you ask to keep them.

Always start with an inventory. In our test for Zéro Corvée video 6, Claude first spotted that a follow-up was already active on Occirank’s account: that’s the right habit, whether you switch something off or add something. The simplest way is still to ask your AI:

“List my active Instagram automations and sequences. Pause the one that answers the word AUTO. Show me what you are about to do before you do it.”

Pause or delete? Pausing keeps everything (keyword, text, targeted posts) so you can restart later. Deleting is final. Before you delete a sequence, ask your AI who is still enrolled and at which step: PlugKit provides that list.

Switch off without losing your leads

A comment automation is often tied to a video that still says “comment GUIDE”. If you switch it off without changing anything, people will keep commenting and never get their link. Before you switch off:

• Edit the caption of the posts concerned, or pin a comment that explains another way to get the link.
• Replace rather than delete if you are only changing the link: editing the DM text is enough, the keyword stays valid.
• Switch tools cleanly: turn the new tool on only after the old one is off on the same posts.

Check that it is really off

1. From a second account, send a first message and comment on a post with the old keyword.
2. If a message still arrives, go through the four sources again: another tool is running alongside.
3. Keep a written list of your active automations and the tool that runs each one. It is the best protection against duplicates, which also make DMs fail: Meta allows only one private reply per comment.

If you are switching off an automation to build a better one, start again from the instagram auto reply page: it compares the native setup with the version run by your AI.