If you use certain social media sites or apps such as Facebook, Instagram or Threads, there’s a setting that you can turn on that lets you post the same thing to your accounts on each app. This is because all three of them (not to mention WhatsApp as well) are owned by the same parent company, Meta.
This is useful if you have friends who only use Instagram but not Facebook, or vice versa, as it saves you having to make multiple posts saying the same thing. For example, before I set my mum up with an Instagram account, she was sad that she never got to see pictures of me at dance events, because they were only posted on Instagram. However, you can also turn this off if you don’t like it.
The first thing to do is make sure that your accounts on each service are all linked. To do this on a smartphone or tablet, open the Facebook app and tap on the three lines menu button at the top or bottom of the page.
Tap on the downward arrow next to your name at the top, then tap on “Go to Accounts Centre”. Tap on “Sharing across profiles”, then on “Add accounts” and follow the instructions to login to the account you want to link.
To link your accounts on a computer, open Facebook and click on your profile picture in the very top right corner. Click on “Settings & privacy”, then “Settings” again. Click on “See more in Accounts Centre” on the left, then click on “Add accounts” under “Profiles” and follow the instructions to login to the account you want to link.
When you create a post on Instagram, right before you publish it, there’ll be a couple of switches at the bottom of the screen under the “Share to” heading, showing your Facebook account and your Threads account (assuming you have both). If you tap on one of those switches to turn it on, you’ll be asked if you want to just share this particular post to Facebook as well, or if you want to always share posts on both apps.
On the Facebook app, when you make a post, there should be a little button in the top right with the little Instagram camera logo – tap on that, then make sure the switch next to your Instagram account is turned on to share the post to Instagram as well. You can decide if you want this to be a one-off or make it permanent by tapping on “Sharing consistency” just underneath the switch.
Or of course, if you don’t want it to post things to both platforms, just make sure these switches are turned off instead of on. If you’ve turned it off once already, and it’s still trying to post to both, you can unlink your accounts by following the instructions here.