Pretty new to the social media industry, Threads is a younger sibling of Instagram, and both these platforms are owned by the parent company, Meta. Being in its infancy at the time of this writing, Threads lacks several features that other social networking portals offer. Nevertheless, the platform still allows you to publish media files that include images, animated GIFs, and videos up to 5 minutes long.
With that said, there could be instances where you find a video or animated GIF attractive, and wish to have it on your smartphone for offline usage or sharing with your close ones.
Now, Threads doesn’t allow you to download such elements to your smartphone. Therefore, to get the job done, you must use a third-party app or a web program that accepts the URL of the target animated GIF or video, and uses it to save the object to your smart device almost instantaneously.
Although it is illegal to copy anyone else’s content without their permission, in some rare scenarios, the uploaded clip or GIF may not involve copyright issues, and you can legally download the item from the portal. This is where this guide comes into play.
3 Tools to Save GIFs from Threads Easily
In the following sections, you will learn three methods to save videos and animated GIFs from Threads to your Android or iOS smart device with the least effort:
Tool 1: Save GIFs from Threads Using a Third-Party App
In this method, you will use the Threadster app. While you can download and use Threadster for free, it is only available for Android devices and not for iPhones or iPads. You can follow the step-by-step instructions given below to use Threadster to download videos from Threads to your smartphone:
Note: Before proceeding, it is essential to understand that at the time of this writing, Threadster can download videos from Threads only in MP4 format. If you are looking for a solution to download animated GIFs, you can skip this section and jump to Method 3.
Step 1: Obtain the Target Video URL
Launch Threads on your Android smartphone or tablet. Locate and open the video that you want to download. Tap the Share icon under the video screen, and tap the Copy link option from the menu that appears.
Step 2: Download and Install the Threadster App
After copying the URL of the target video, go to the Play Store. Search the Threadster app, and tap Install to install the program on your Android device.
Step 3: Download the Video in MP4
Once installed, launch Threadster, paste the URL you copied earlier in the Enter Thread Link field, and tap Download. Wait while Threadster fetches the video from the URL. When it does, tap Download to download the target video from Threads directly to your Android smart device’s gallery.
Tool 2: Save GIFs from Threads Through Online Tool – Threads Video Downloader
In this method, you will access a dedicated website called Threads Video Downloader (https://threadsvideodownloader.co/) to download Threads videos to your smartphone. The good news is that because Threads Video Downloader is an online solution, you can access it from both Android and iOS devices as long as they have a web browser and are connected to the Internet.
You can follow the step-by-step instructions given below to download videos from Threads using the Threads Video Downloader web portal:
Step 1: Obtain the Video URL
Use the process explained in the previous method to copy the URL of the target video you want to download to your phone.
Step 2: Get to the Threads Video Downloader Web Portal
Launch your favorite web browser on your iOS or Android smart device, and go to the https://threadsvideodownloader.co/ link.
Step 3: Download the Video in MP4
When the Threads Video Downloader web portal opens, paste the URL you copied earlier in the available field and tap Submit.
Wait while Threads Video Downloader fetches the video from Threads, and when it does, tap Download to download the video from Threads to your Android or iOS smart device.
Tool 3: Save GIFs from Threads Through Online Tool – Threads Photo Downloader
Even in this method, you will use a third-party web app (but a different one) that also allows you to download animated GIFs from Threads, in addition to saving the videos from the portal in MP4 format. The name of the website is Threads Downloader, and you can access it on your Android or iOS smart device by following the https://threadsphotodownloader.com/ URL.
The process to use Threads Downloader to download animated GIFs from Threads is given below:
Step 1: Obtain the Animated GIFs URL
Use the procedure explained earlier to go to the target animated GIF on Threads and copy its URL to the clipboard.
Step 2: Access Threads Downloader on Your Smart Device
Launch your favorite web browser on your smartphone or tablet and go to the https://threadsphotodownloader.com/ URL.
Step 3: Save the Animated GIF from Threads to Your Phone
Once the Threads Downloader web page opens, paste the URL of the target GIF in the available field, and tap Download.
When Threads Downloader prompts, choose your preferred destination folder and save the GIF.
Conclusion
Because Threads is pretty new (not more than a month old at the time of this writing), many supporting websites and mobile apps are still in the production phase. As a result, you may not find many programs to perform advanced tasks on the portal, at least not that easily. Thanks to mobile applications and web apps such as Threadster, Threads Video Downloader, and Threads Downloader, which allow you to download media files, especially videos and animated GIFs from Threads to your smartphone’s gallery.
FAQs
- Why Threads doesn’t allow anyone to download videos from its portal?
This restriction is imposed by almost all social media websites across the globe. This happens because it is illegal to download anyone else’s creations without their consent.
If social networking websites start allowing video downloads that easily, you might unintentionally violate the copyright rules defined by the original creator.
- Can I use the downloaded videos for commercial use?
Only if the original creator of the video has explicitly defined that anyone can use the clip for personal or commercial purposes. While some creators are liberal and take things easy, others could be strict, and if you use their content for monetization, you may get into legal trouble. Therefore, before taking any such risk, it would be a good idea to check the privacy and usage policy of the content.
- If downloading videos or GIFs from Threads is illegal, why do third-party websites and apps have such a feature that goes against the social network portals’ policies?
Sometimes, the original creator of the video is liberal and may have imposed no restrictions on the uses of the content in any manner. However, the social media portal still doesn’t allow you to download the clips due to general copyright policies they have imposed globally, irrespective of the content type.
With that said, to allow fair usage of such content, these third-party apps and web portals have a feature to download content from Threads or any other social media website with ease.
