Set Up Design Groups

Turn on adaptive designs for a Meta channel, read the groups-and-shapes grid, add a second creative concept with its own image and optional video template, fill a missing shape or point one design at a different template, and publish — step by step.

Updated September 4, 2026

This is the practical walkthrough for adaptive designs: naming your Meta channel's designs so ads can pin them by name instead of by position, and adding a second creative concept you can switch ads to.

You'll need a Meta channel with at least one image field. Everything here edits the channel's draft — nothing reaches your live feed until you publish.

1. Turn on the Adaptive designs use#

On the channel's Settings tab, find the Used for section and turn on the Adaptive designs chip on the Meta row. That declares the capability — it doesn't change your feed yet — and it's what enables the dialog in the next step.

2. Open the Adaptive designs dialog#

Go to your channel's Fields tab and click Adaptive designs in the toolbar.

The button appears on a channel that's declared for Meta, and enables once the Adaptive designs chip is on (or when the channel already carries design blocks). If it's greyed out, its tooltip points you back to the Used for section.

You can also get here from the Renable Options panel in Meta Ads Manager: on a channel that still picks designs by position, the panel shows an Enable adaptive designs link that opens this exact dialog. And on a channel you've already turned it on for, the Adaptive designs row in the Media group of the fields table carries an Open Adaptive designs button that does the same thing.

3. Turn it on#

The dialog explains what's about to happen and asks for one thing: a design group name. It starts as default, which is a perfectly good answer — this first group is your base group, the designs your ads show when nothing is pinned.

The helper text under the box tells you how many designs will be created from your current image fields. Your main image becomes the first design and each additional image the next, in order.

Read anything the dialog flags before continuing:

  • Fallback values won't carry into a design. A design carries one value, not a chain of alternatives, so if one of your image fields has fallbacks, the dialog names it and keeps the main value. Renable tells you rather than quietly picking one for you.
  • Rules that reference a converted image field are listed by name, because those parts of them stop doing anything once the field becomes a design.

Then click Turn on adaptive designs. If the Adaptive designs add-on isn't declared on the channel yet, Renable declares it for you at the same time — adding the Meta destination too, if the channel doesn't have one. That part applies immediately, like every Used for change; the design blocks themselves are draft edits waiting on Publish.

4. Read your groups#

The dialog now shows your groups as a grid, with the short explanation of what adaptive designs are for still at the top — it stays there after conversion, so you can re-read it whenever you come back.

  • Columns are shapes. Square (1:1), Portrait (4:5) and Story (9:16) are always there, plus a column for any other shape one of your designs uses, labelled by its pixel size.
  • Rows are groups, and every group is two rows: its image designs, then its video designs. A video design's tile carries a play badge and its caption ends with the video's length, so you never have to guess which row you're in.
  • A cell holding a design draws it at its true shape, with the template it renders and the size underneath it. That's the fastest read on a group — one square, one taller, one taller still, and you know what shapes it covers.
  • An empty cell is a shape the group doesn't cover. It's clickable: that's how you add the missing design (step 6).
  • The video row is a single Add video link until the group has its first video design. Once one exists it becomes a row of cells like the image row above it, so a group's video coverage reads the same way its image coverage does.
  • The last column is for a shape that isn't in the grid yet. Whatever size you pick there becomes a new column.

The base group is tinted and carries the Default designs badge and the line "What your ads show when no group is pinned". It can't be deleted — turning adaptive designs off is the way back. Every other named group has a trash icon beside its name. A group carrying no name at all — which only happens on design fields built by hand rather than through this dialog — shows no trash icon and can't be renamed as a whole; its designs can still be repointed and renamed one at a time, and turning adaptive designs off removes it along with everything else.

A product photo as your base group's main design is completely legitimate — not every design has to be a Studio template. Because it has no shape, it gets its own Main column at the front of the grid rather than sitting in one of the shape columns: it reads Product photo, shows no render (only designs rendered from a template have one), and its picker offers any size, since there is no shape to keep. The same column holds the main design when Renable can't resolve its template.

Cover the shapes you care about#

Where a group lacks a shape the base group has, that shape is an empty cell in the group's row, and a warning under the group says what it means: an ad pinned to that group uses another of the group's designs instead, which can show letterboxed. A group that covers only one shape gets the plainer version of the same sentence — that one design shows everywhere, letterboxed where it doesn't fit. It's a warning rather than a note because it's worth acting on; there's no link in it, because the fix is the empty cell right above it.

Three ways out: click the empty cell and pick a template that has the shape (step 6), add that size to the group's own template in Studio, or accept the gap deliberately.

The Default designs row has its own warning#

The base group never gets the letterboxing warning above — that one is about an ad pinned to a group, and nothing pins your defaults. It gets a different one instead, whenever the default designs are missing a shape another group covers, or a surface mark (step 6) another group carries.

It reads like this: "default has no Reels design. Ads that aren't pinned to a group have nothing to show on Reels, so Meta picks another image — possibly one from black-friday. Mark your Story design for Reels."

The fix clause follows the kind of gap: a missing shape asks you to add a design, a missing mark asks you to mark the design already in that cell.

The reason is that an ad with no group pin is matched against all of your product images, so wherever the defaults have nothing to offer, Meta reaches for some other image in your feed. The cell to fix it in is directly above the warning.

A group other than the default one gets a warning if it carries a surface mark#

Surface marks belong to the default designs (step 6). If another group still carries one — from an earlier setup, or from a hand edit — that group's row says so:

"black-friday's Stories mark applies to every ad on the channel, not just ads pinned to black-friday. Ads pinned to another group can show this design on Stories. Remove the mark, or move it to default."

Open that design's picker and click the chip to turn it off.

"Also in this group"#

Below a group's two rows you may see one headed Also in this group. It holds designs that don't belong in any column: a second design of a shape the group already covers, and any design whose template or size Renable can't resolve (an archived template, or a size that was deleted). They are really in your feed, so the dialog shows them rather than hiding them. Each one opens the same picker — though a design Renable can't resolve gets the explanation instead of a list, because repointing it isn't safe until you sort the template out in Studio.

5. Add a second design group#

This is the point of the whole feature: a second creative concept you can switch ads to, without changing the image any running ad shows.

Add a design group is a dashed row beneath the grid, carrying one line — "Never changes a running ad." Click it and the dialog switches to the add-group view: the grid is replaced by the form, and the dialog's own buttons become ← All design groups and Add group. Fill in three things:

  1. Group name — black-friday, summer-sale. Lowercase letters, numbers and dashes; the box rewrites what you type as you type it, because the name is literally what ads will pin.
  2. Image template — the Studio template this group's designs are prefilled from. Renable creates one design per size the template has, so a template with square, portrait and story sizes gives you a group covering all three shapes in one click. The panel on the right lists exactly the designs it will create — each with its tile at its true shape, its shape name, the name it will be given and its pixel size — in the same order the group's own row will show them once it exists. So you can see what you're about to get before you commit to it. Before you've picked a template that panel is already there, headed What you'll get with three faint outline tiles and the line "Pick an image template and this lists the designs it creates, one per size" — so choosing a template fills a space that's waiting rather than growing the form under your cursor.
  3. Video template (optional) — a template that renders video. It creates a video design per size, sitting alongside the image designs in the same group. Note it reaches further than the image designs do — see the paragraph below.

Click Add group. A new group's image designs only ever appear on ads you pin to it, so no running ad changes the image it shows. Its video designs are the exception — they're the product's videos, so any ad with Dynamic Media on can draw on them whether it's pinned or not. Add the video template when you're ready for that, not months ahead. See Run different designs for different campaigns or seasons.

That panel signs off with the thing most people don't expect: each design it creates can be pointed at a different template afterwards, by hovering its cell in the grid. That's the next step.

You can add video designs to an existing group later from its Add video link, and remove them one at a time from each design's picker (see Managing a group below).

6. Change what one design shows, or add a missing one#

A design group is a set of designs prefilled from one template — not welded to it. Any one design in a group can render from a different Studio template, independently of the rest, and any shape the group is missing can be filled without touching the others.

Both go through the same picker:

  • To change a design, hover its cell and click the pencil that appears.
  • To add one, click an empty cell in the shape you want. The picker opens already limited to that shape.
  • To add a shape that isn't a column yet, click the + in the last column of the row you want — the image row or the video row. That picker is unconstrained, and the size you pick becomes a new column.

Things about the picker worth knowing:

  • It only offers sizes of the column's shape. A square size can't go in the Story column: that wouldn't give you a differently-sourced Story design, it would leave the group with two Squares and no Story at all. The picker says so in a line rather than letting you find out from the coverage note afterwards.
  • The template and size the design uses right now is marked In use, with a checkmark, so you can see where you're starting from.
  • Templates with no size of that shape aren't listed as dead rows. They're counted in one line at the bottom instead — "N other templates have no Story size. Add one in Studio to use them here."
  • If no template has that shape at all, the picker says so outright — "No image template has a Story size yet." — instead of showing you an empty list. Adding the size in Studio is the fix.
  • A design Renable can't resolve isn't offered a list. If the design's bound template or size can't be resolved — an archived template, a size that was deleted — the picker explains rather than listing candidates: "Renable can't resolve this design's template or size — open the design in Studio to check it." That's deliberate. Such a design looks shape-less while still carrying the shape marker its old size earned, so repointing it could leave the design and its marker contradicting each other. Sort it out in Studio first.
  • Only that one design changes. Picking a candidate rewrites that design's template and size, and nothing else in the group.

The design's name stays exactly as it was. The name is the string an ad pins, so Renable never changes it as a side effect of changing what the design renders from — that would un-pin every ad pinned to it.

That has an honest consequence worth planning for: an overridden design keeps its original name for good, so a name that described where the design came from stops describing what it now shows — in your feed, and anywhere you read that name back later. Renaming is not the fix, because it un-pins every ad pinned to that design. What the picker gives you instead is the truth in one place: under the candidates it shows "Ads pin this design as" followed by the name, so you can always check what a design is actually called before you go looking for it in Ads Manager.

Video designs have the same picker, limited to templates that can render video and to the column's shape, exactly as image designs are.

Mark a default design for Instagram, Stories or Reels#

Under the candidate list, an image design in the Default designs group has a Preferred for row with three chips — Instagram, Stories and Reels. Turning one on tells Meta to prefer this design on that surface when the ad adapts to placement, and the chip appears on the design's cell so you can read your coverage without opening anything.

  • The row is only on the default designs, and the marks apply to every ad. In our own testing a mark decides a surface for the whole channel, so it can't belong to one group; Meta documents none of this, and we've confirmed it in ad previews rather than in live delivery — see Instagram, Stories and Reels. On any other group the chips appear only if a mark is already there, so you can turn it off.
  • Stories and Reels are only offered on a Story-shaped design. Meta only selects a marked image if it really is 9:16, so on any other shape the chip is disabled and its tooltip says why. This is the reason to build two 9:16 sizes in Studio: the safe zone for Stories is not the safe zone for Reels, and one design can only be right for one of them.
  • Instagram is offered on every default image design — it's about the platform rather than the shape.
  • Video designs have no Preferred for row. Meta documents no video equivalent; it matches a video's shape from the file.

Two designs of one shape marked differently sit side by side in the same cell — a Stories one and a Reels one in the Story column. Two marked the same way (or not marked at all) don't stack; the second moves to Also in this group, because nothing tells them apart.

The dashed 4:5 auto / 9:16 auto chip you'll see on some of the default designs is a different thing and isn't a choice: it's Meta's shape marker, added from the design's own size.

7. Publish#

Close the dialog and press Publish on the channel. That's what deploys the design blocks to your live feed. Until Meta fetches the updated feed, the designs aren't in Meta's copy of your catalog yet — the Renable Options panel marks a design in that state, and shows you when Meta last fetched.

8. Pin an ad to a group#

Open a catalog ad in Meta Ads Manager with the Renable Options extension installed. The panel lists your design groups under Other design groups, each shown as a strip of its designs at their true shapes. Click Use on the group you want and confirm.

For Meta to adapt the shape to each surface — the thing pinning by name preserves — Adapt to placement needs to be switched on in the ad's Advantage+ settings. The panel says so on every name-pinned ad, because Renable can't see that setting reliably enough to tell you it's already on.

Managing a group#

  • Rename a group by clicking its name in the grid and typing. Renable confirms before the rename goes through, because ads pinned to the old name fall back to your default designs until they're pinned again.
  • Rename a design in its picker: hover the design, click the pencil, and edit the name under "Ads pin this design as". It asks for the same confirmation, for the same reason. (Don't confuse this with picking a different template in that same picker — that changes what the design renders and never touches its name. See step 6.)
  • Remove one design with Remove design at the bottom of its picker. It leaves the feed on the next publish and ads pinned to it fall back to the group's other designs. The base group's first design has no Remove design at all — its picker says why: it's the design your ads fall back to when nothing else matches.
  • Add video designs to an existing group from the Add video link on its row, then keep adding them cell by cell in the video row once it's open.
  • Delete a group with the trash icon beside its name. Its designs leave the feed on the next publish and ads pinned to it fall back to your default designs. The base group has no trash icon — turning the feature off is the way back.
  • Turn off adaptive designs sits in the dialog's footer, to the left of Done. It converts your image designs back to plain image fields in their current order, keeping their values. Video designs have no plain field to convert back to, so they are removed — the confirmation lists them by name first. Note it flattens every group, so three groups of three shapes come back as nine image fields, not the two you started with. To drop one concept, delete that group instead.

Troubleshooting#

The dialog says adaptive designs isn't switched on for Meta.

Your channel carries design blocks but the Adaptive designs add-on isn't declared, so those blocks won't be recognised as designs. The banner has a Turn on button that fixes it in one click.

The panel still shows a flat list of designs, not groups.

The panel reads your published channel. Publish the channel, and give Meta time to fetch the feed — the panel's freshness line tells you when it last did.

An ad I switched still shows the old design.

Two normal causes. Ads Manager's own preview doesn't refresh by itself — reload the page (the switch dialog offers a one-click reload). And if Meta hasn't fetched your updated feed yet, the ad keeps running its default display until it does, then starts showing the group on its own.

Where to go next#