The Renable Options browser extension

Renable Options is a Chrome browser extension that works inside Meta Ads Manager. It does two things.

It shows and switches designs. When you open a catalog ad in the ad editor, the panel shows which of your Renable designs that ad is running, lists what else your channel could run instead — with previews, shapes, and sizes — and lets you switch the ad without leaving Ads Manager. That's what the rest of this article covers.

It opens Aimée beside Ads Manager. A side panel puts Renable's AI assistant next to the account you're working in, where she can read the campaigns, ad sets and ads you're looking at, tell you what one ad is actually running, and quote what Meta reported for a period. She reads and explains; she can't change anything in Meta. See Aimée in Meta Ads Manager for how to open it and what she can and can't see.

What the panel lists depends on how your channel names its designs. On a channel with adaptive designs on it lists design groups, and switching an ad moves it to a whole group. On a channel that still picks designs by position it lists the individual designs. Both are covered below.

Before you start#

The panel can only recognize ads that run on a catalog fed by one of your Renable channels, in an ad account you gave Renable. That happens once per organization on the Integrations page (settings menu, top right → Integrations), where you connect the Meta business and tick which of its ad accounts, Meta catalogs and Pages Renable may use — see Integrations. The panel says so when an ad needs something you didn't tick, and links straight to where you add it.

Install and sign in#

1. Install Renable Options from the Chrome Web Store.
2. Open Meta Ads Manager and open a catalog ad in the ad editor. The Renable Options panel appears near the ad's creative section.
3. Click Sign in in the panel. A Renable tab opens — sign in to Renable if you aren't already, then click Connect. The tab closes and the panel is ready.

Your Renable session stays inside the extension's background service and is never shared with the pages you visit — it is handed only to Renable's own pages, which is what lets the Aimée side panel sign you in without a second login. The extension never touches your Facebook login. It reads which ad you have open, and asks Renable about it.

The same sign-in covers both halves of the extension, so signing in here also signs you in to the Aimée side panel.

Reading the panel#

Design groups#

On a channel with adaptive designs on, the panel lists design groups — named creative concepts — rather than individual images.

• The group the ad is running sits at the top, under This ad runs:. Its card carries the group's name, a strip of its designs drawn at the shape each one actually is (Square, Portrait, Story), and — listed under the strip — each design's own name, its pixel dimensions, and how many products it renders for. Image and video designs sit in the same strip, video marked with a small play badge, because Meta chooses the medium per impression rather than you choosing between them.
• The groups you can switch to are listed under Other design groups, each as a name, its tile strip, and a Use button. These rows are deliberately shorter than the current group's card: they show which shapes a group covers, but not its per-design names, sizes or coverage figures. Those are worth reading for the group you're actually running and are noise for one you haven't switched to — so if you want a group's coverage percentages before you commit, switch to it and read them there, or check the group in Renable.
• A group marked Default designs is your base group — what ads show when nothing is pinned.
• Use switches the ad to the whole group, which is exactly what lets Meta keep adapting the shape to wherever the ad runs. The confirmation repeats that group's tile strip, so "did I click the right one" is a glance rather than a name match.

If a channel sends images both as design groups and as plain image fields, the plain ones are still listed, under Other designs in this feed — but without a Use button, because with two competing sets Renable can't tell which one Meta reads.

Channels that still pick designs by position#

A channel you haven't converted lists the individual designs instead, one row each — and this path is fully supported. Meta calls position selection legacy but has set no removal date, and converting a channel never moves ads that are already running, so ads pinned by position keep working exactly as they did.

For a recognized catalog ad, the panel shows:

• The design the ad is running — a preview image, the template name, size, and dimensions.
• The other designs your channel provides for the same products, under Other designs available, so you can see what the ad could run instead. Past the first five, the rest sit behind a Show N additional designs link.
• How many products each design renders for — a small mark left of each design's name: a green check when the design renders for every product in the feed, an amber half-circle when it does not. Hover the mark for the exact figure. "Renders for 92% of products in this feed" means the design is missing for the rest, usually because content is missing for those products. A very low or 0% figure means the design isn't really in the feed yet: either something is broken (check the design's content in Renable) or you just added the design and the feed hasn't updated since — either way, not a design to point ads at yet.

The panel also shows a notice at the top explaining what adaptive designs would change, with an Enable adaptive designs link that opens the Adaptive designs dialog on the channel's Fields tab. The notice has a close button — dismissing it hides it for that campaign, in that browser. It's an invitation, not a deadline.

Which mechanism the ad is using#

Under the design it's running, the panel states how the open ad picks it:

• An ad pinned by name is told that Meta can still adapt its shape, and that this needs Adapt to placement switched on in the ad's Advantage+ settings.
• An ad still pinned by position on a channel that now names its designs is told so, and that switching it to a group moves it over. Renable never does that for you — converting a channel leaves every running ad exactly as it was.

What the panel tells you either way#

• How current the feed is — when Renable last updated the feed and when Meta last fetched it. Changes you make in Renable reach your ads only after both have happened.
• Where a design change is on its way — a design change travels from your Renable draft to the published channel, into the rendered feed, and finally into Meta's catalog when Meta fetches the feed. When any of those steps hasn't happened yet, the panel shows one notice saying exactly which step is pending, with a link to where you fix or watch it: unpublished design changes link to the channel in Renable, an unpublished design links to Studio, a feed Meta hasn't fetched yet links to the feed in Commerce Manager (where Meta's own "Request update" button lives) and tells you when the next scheduled fetch is due.
• Designs Meta doesn't have yet — a design or group that isn't in Meta's copy of the catalog yet is marked where it's listed, because Meta can only show a design once it has fetched the feed carrying it. The switch confirmation repeats this warning, so it's never a surprise. It's a warning rather than a block: in our own testing an ad pinned to a design Meta hadn't fetched kept running normally on the feed's default designs and started showing the pinned design as soon as Meta fetched. (Meta doesn't document that fallback — it's Renable's own finding from testing against real ads.)

Previews come from your feed's real rendered images when available, falling back to the design's gallery image (video designs always show the gallery image, when the design has one). Click any preview to see it full-size. The channel name links to the channel in Renable, the "Renable updated this feed" note links to the channel's Activity tab, and "Meta last fetched it" links to the feed in Meta's Commerce Manager.

Switching a design#

Under Other design groups, click Use on the group you want, review the confirmation, and confirm — the ad then runs that whole group. (On a channel that still picks designs by position, that list is Other designs available instead and you switch one design at a time. Everything below applies to both.) What happens behind the scenes:

• Ad creatives can't be edited on Meta, so Renable creates a new version of the ad's creative — an exact copy with only the design changed — and points the ad at it. Renable verifies the copy is faithful before the ad is touched; if Meta doesn't accept an exact copy, the ad is left unchanged.
• Renable sets Dynamic Media to match what you pinned. For an image-only design it turns Dynamic Media off, so Meta shows exactly the design you chose instead of substituting its own pick. For a design group that carries video, it turns Dynamic Media on instead — that switch is what lets a catalog video serve at all, so turning it off would suppress the very thing you pinned. The confirmation message says which direction it went. Switching back to the ad's original creative restores it exactly as it was, including its own Dynamic Media setting.
• Meta may review the ad again after any switch, and a live ad's delivery learning may restart — the confirmation says so up front. Switching on a paused ad avoids the learning cost.
• Switching back to a design the ad used before reuses the earlier version instead of creating another one — provided nothing about it has changed since. If the design group has moved on (a shape added, a design renamed, its first video added), the remembered version no longer pins what the group is now, so Renable creates a fresh one. And an ad that was never pinned to anything has nothing to reuse the first time you pin it back to your defaults.
• Ads Manager's own preview doesn't refresh by itself — it keeps showing the previous design until the page reloads. After a switch, the dialog confirms the outcome and offers a one-click Reload page; closing it instead (the ✕, or clicking outside) leaves the page as it is.

If designs can't be switched at all, the panel explains why in that feed's own terms — a feed whose design positions vary per product and a feed sending images two different ways are different problems with different fixes. An individual design that can't be pinned simply doesn't get a switch button. Note that varying positions only affect a channel that pins by position: on a channel with adaptive designs on, nothing is numbered, so groups stay switchable.

Warnings about Meta settings#

Meta's Advantage+ features can change — or completely replace — the design an ad shows. The panel checks the ad every time you open it and warns about the ones that affect your design:

• Dynamic Media is the important one, and what the panel says about it depends on what the ad is pinned to. On an ad pinned to one image, Dynamic Media being on means Meta may show a product video or a different image instead of the design you chose — Meta turns it on by default for catalog ads, so the panel reminds you unless it has been explicitly turned off under the ad's Advantage+ settings. On an ad pinned by name to a design group that carries video, it's the opposite: Dynamic Media is the mechanism doing the work, so the panel notes that it's what lets the video show — and warns if it has been switched off, because then the video can never surface.
• Other enhancements — generated backgrounds, expanded images, visual touch-ups, overlays — are listed when they're on, so you know Meta may be altering how the design looks. That's true of a video design as much as an image one.
• If the ad can run on Stories or Reels but the current design isn't tall enough for those placements, the panel points it out — they show such a design with empty space around it — and it tells you when your feed already has a taller design that fits. The design to add or check is your default one: Stories and Reels are decided by the marks on the default designs, which apply to every ad, so a tall design added to a pinned group doesn't claim those placements for that group. See Instagram, Stories and Reels.

If the panel can't show designs for an ad, it says why in plain language. The common cases:

• The ad account isn't connected to Renable — connect it on the Integrations page (settings menu, top right → Integrations).
• The ad hasn't been published yet — Renable can only read published ads. Publish the ad (or discard the draft) and reopen it.
• It's a Collection ad — Meta always shows your products' main design for Collection ads, so there's nothing to pick per ad. To change what people see, change the main design in Renable.
• The ad doesn't use a catalog — ads without product catalogs don't run Renable designs.
• The catalog isn't fed by your Renable channel — the panel only recognizes catalogs that fetch one of your channels' feeds.
• Renable wasn't given this ad's Meta catalog or Page — see below.

When Renable wasn't given the ad's Meta catalog or Page#

You choose what Renable may use when you connect a Meta business, so an ad can sit in a connected ad account and still use a Meta catalog or a Page that was never ticked. Two findings say so, and both carry the fix as their link:

• "Renable can't read the Meta catalog this ad set uses, so it can't tell which design this ad runs." The panel can't get as far as naming the design, because finding it means reading the ad set's Meta catalog. It can't name that catalog either — the read that would have told us its name is the one that failed — so it describes it instead.
• "Renable isn't allowed to create ads for <Page>, so it can't switch this ad's design." Here the panel can read everything and show you the designs; only the switch fails, because the new version of the creative is created under the ad's own Page. The Page is named when Renable already knows its name, and described as the Page the ad posts under when it doesn't.

Both offer the same link, Add access in Renable, and both name the path in the sentence beside it — Integrations → your business → Edit access — so it works as directions if you'd rather click through by hand. Following it signs you in with Meta and opens the access list on a short confirmation: the missing item at the top, already ticked and labelled with what it is for, everything Renable already holds unchanged below it. Click Add access, then Refresh in the panel.

If the item cannot be added — a Page while Meta is still approving Renable's Page permissions, or a Meta catalog your own Meta account cannot read — the row there says which case it is and what to do about it.

In practice the two rarely appear together: the catalog one blocks the read, so the Page one shows up only once the catalog is fixed and you try a switch.

See Integrations for what each kind of access lets Renable do.

Troubleshooting#

• No panel appears at all. Make sure you're in the ad editor of Ads Manager (editing a single ad), and that the extension is enabled in your browser. If Meta has just changed Ads Manager's layout, the panel may take a short while to catch up — Renable updates its positioning remotely, without needing a new extension version.
• The panel says your session expired. Click Sign in again — the panel reconnects through the Renable website.
• The panel asks which channel to look at. This happens when more than one of your Renable channels feeds the same Meta catalog. Pick the channel whose designs you want to switch between — the panel then shows that channel's designs. If you work in several Renable organizations, you don't have to pick one: the panel works out which organization the ad belongs to from the channel itself.
• The Aimée side panel doesn't open. It opens only on Meta Ads Manager tabs — see Aimée in Meta Ads Manager.

Where to go next#

• Aimée in Meta Ads Manager — the extension's other half: asking Renable's AI assistant about the account you have open.

• Adaptive designs — naming your designs so ads pin them by name.

• Adaptive designs and design groups — the two terms, defined.

• Set up design groups — the setup walkthrough in Renable.

• Test two designs against each other — using the panel to run a head-to-head between two designs.

• Run different designs for different campaigns or seasons — switching ads between concepts, and rolling back.

• Get video into your catalog ads — what the panel's Dynamic Media warnings mean on a video pin.

• Connecting a channel to Meta, Google or TikTok