Instagram API troubleshooting guide

Our service utilizes an official Instagram Graph API. Occasionally, this API may experience downtime or other issues, leading to errors that prevent us from gathering the necessary data to create a widget.

This article provides advice on how to respond when such errors occur.

Method 1 – The most straightforward fix: try again

Often, the simplest solution is to change any of your widget settings, which will trigger another request to the API. Transient errors can sometimes occur, but simply trying again may resolve them.

Method 2 – Check your access token

Ensure your access token (the connection between your Instagram account and our app) is valid. If the connection is inactive, we cannot successfully query the API, resulting in error messages. Please renew your token/connection first and then try again.

To renew the token, please follow these steps:

1. Click the Accounts link in the menu to see the list of your Instagram accounts.
2. Search for the Instagram account that results in the API error message. If the token has “Expired” status, please click the Refresh token button to start refreshing the token.

Here is a more detailed guide about refreshing the token: How to refresh the expired access token?

Once you refresh the expired token, the error message about API failure should no longer occur.

Method 3 – Fix for the consumer connection

Meta decided to deprecate the Instagram Basic Display API that we used behind the consumer connection. Widgets using this connection require migrating to one of the business connections. Please follow the instructions in this guide – How to convert consumer connection to business connection.

Method 4 – Contact our support

If none of the above tips solve the issue, please check the Meta status page before submitting a support ticket. If there is an API outage, please wait until Meta resolves the problem. It usually takes about an hour or two.

If there is no outage, please submit a support ticket and tell us which methods you have tried. Knowing what you have attempted will help us provide more accurate advice.