How to Download Pictures and Videos From Threads on Your iPhone

Meta’s Threads app, seemingly one of the most popular rivals to X (formerly known as Twitter), is full of interesting photos and videos. As with all social media platforms, Threads accounts post everything from cute cat videos, picturesque locations, or screen recordings showing you useful features on your phone. Unfortunately, Threads doesn’t have a native feature for downloading this content to your iPhone, but it’s still easy to do if you know how.

How to download photos and videos from Threads on iPhone

When there isn’t a built-in download feature in a popular app, you can bet someone has created a useful shortcut to get the job done. This time, that person is @gluebyte, who has uploaded a Threads Download shortcut to RoutineHub. Here’s how it works:

1. Make sure you have Apple’s Shortcuts app on your iPhone.
2. Download and install two other free apps—Scriptable and a-Shell mini.
3. Open the Threads app and sign in if you aren’t already.
4. Download the Threads Download shortcut.
5. Open the Threads app and long-press the paper airplane icon below any post. You can scroll down and select Threads Download from the list of shortcuts. Alternatively, you may select Copy, open the Shortcuts app, and tap Threads Download.
6. The shortcut will run and ask for a few permissions. You can safely allow all of these.
7. You’ll see a couple of prompts asking if you want the file’s date to be the date it was posted or the current date, and if you’d like to copy the caption to the clipboard. Select the options you prefer.

That’s it! The downloaded media files will show up in your Photos library. The only limitation is you can only download media files from public accounts.

To download from a private Threads account, use an iPad

If you’d like to download something from a private account, you’re out of luck on the iPhone. However, you can follow the same process above on an iPad with success—the shortcut works for both public and private accounts using that device, which operates via the less restrictive desktop version of Threads.