How to Post on Threads: Step-by-Step (Text, Photos, Replies)

Threads uses your Instagram login, but Meta's text-first social app has its own feed, its own composer and its own rules. This walkthrough covers the exact steps on iPhone, Android and the web, the limits you'll hit, how replies and edits work, and what to check when a post refuses to go out.

How Do You Post on Threads, Step by Step?

Here is the full flow on iPhone and Android:

1. Open Threads and tap the compose icon in the center of the bottom navigation bar.
2. Type your post — up to 500 characters, including spaces and emojis.
3. Tap the paperclip icon to attach up to 20 photos or videos from your gallery. Each video clip can run up to 5 minutes.
4. Optional extras live behind the three-dot menu in the composer: Poll (polls close automatically after 24 hours) and Schedule. The ghost icon next to Post turns the draft into a 24-hour disappearing post.
5. Tap Reply options at the bottom left of the composer to choose who can reply or quote.
6. Tap Post in the top right.

On web (threads.com), click the "Start a thread…" box at the top of the feed or the compose icon in the left sidebar. Everything else behaves the same.

To publish a multi-post thread rather than a single post, tap "Add to thread" below your draft and write the next post in the chain. You can stack as many as you want and publish them together — they'll appear as one connected thread instead of separate posts in the feed.

What Are the Character, Media, and Link Limits on Threads?

The Threads composer has firm limits, and knowing them keeps a post from getting truncated mid-thought. Each post holds 500 characters, including spaces and emojis, and that ceiling applies to original posts, replies and quote posts identically. You can attach up to 20 photos or videos per post — the limit Threads raised from 10 in September 2024 to match Instagram carousels; multi-media posts display as a swipeable carousel. Each video clip can be up to 5 minutes long and 1 GB, with 1080p the recommended resolution. Links aren't auto-shortened the way they are on X — the full URL counts against your 500-character budget, but Threads renders a preview card below the post. If 500 characters isn't enough, attach a text attachment holding up to 10,000 characters, which appears as a tap-to-expand card under the main post, per Meta's September 2025 announcement. Your bio is capped at 150 characters. None of these limits change for verified or business accounts — Threads applies them uniformly.

How Do You Reply on Threads and Control Who Can Reply?

Replies on Threads stack under the original post the way they do on X or Bluesky, not as a flat comment list like Instagram. To reply, tap the speech-bubble icon under any post, write up to 500 characters, attach media if you want, and tap Post. Your reply becomes part of the public conversation and also shows on the Replies tab of your profile, which you can hide from visitors in your profile settings. The more useful control sits in the composer before you publish: tap Reply options at the bottom left and pick from Anyone, Your followers, Profiles you follow or Profiles you mention — the four choices Threads listed in December 2025, when the control was renamed from "Anyone can reply & quote". Threads also added reply approvals in October 2025, so you can vet replies before they appear. Heavy posters use this to keep spam accounts out of high-reach threads. Replying to your own post shortly after publishing is also the cleanest way to add context you couldn't fit in 500 characters.

How Do You Edit a Threads Post After Publishing?

Threads gives you a 15-minute window to edit a post after you publish it — Adam Mosseri announced the extension from five minutes to fifteen on 1 October 2024. To edit: tap the three-dot menu on your post, choose Edit, make your changes and tap Post again. A countdown shows how much time is left, and once a post has been edited an edit indicator appears next to the timestamp, though Threads shows no version history. The catch is that you can only edit the text and topics, not the media — attach the wrong photo and your only option is to delete the post and start over. Fifteen minutes is short enough that most edits end up being typo fixes, and deleting to repost costs you the early engagement a post has already collected. We go deeper on the trade-off in how to edit a Threads post.

How Do You Schedule Threads Posts in Advance?

Native scheduling shipped to all Threads users in January 2025 and works from the composer. Write your post, tap the three-dot menu inside the composer (not the one on a published post), choose Schedule, pick a date and time, and confirm. The post sits in your drafts until its slot comes up, and you can edit or delete it from there any time before it publishes. Native scheduling is fine if Threads is the only place you post, but it's deliberately basic: no bulk upload, no cross-platform queue, no analytics after the post goes out. You can add a Threads account to a Meta business portfolio, and desktop posting from Meta Business Suite has been reported since April 2026 — but Meta doesn't document Threads scheduling there, so treat the Threads composer as the reliable native option. If you post to Threads alongside X or Bluesky, a third-party scheduler saves you from writing the same thing three times in three apps.

Why Won't My Threads Post Publish or Show Up?

Two different problems get confused here, and the fix depends on which one you have. A post that won't publish — it spins, fails to upload, or throws a generic error — is almost always local: a flaky connection, a video that's too long or in an unsupported format, an outdated app build, or Meta having a bad hour. Work through it in order: retry on a different network, drop the media and post the text alone to see whether the file is the problem, update the app, then sign out and back in. If a specific video fails repeatedly, re-export it shorter and under the 5-minute cap. A post that publishes but nobody sees is a different thing entirely — the post exists, so it's a distribution question, not an upload one. If replies or profiles are showing you content not available on Threads, that's a visibility issue rather than a failed post. And if your reach has dropped across every post rather than one, run the free Threads shadowban test to see whether you're actually being filtered before you change how you post.

Schedule Threads Posts Alongside X and Bluesky with Postory

If Threads is one of three places you post, hopping between native schedulers gets old fast. Postory connects to your Threads account through the official Meta API and lets you draft, schedule and publish to Threads, X and Bluesky from one composer. You write once, pick the platforms, set a time, and the calendar shows everything queued across accounts — so a 9am Threads post doesn't collide with the same thought on X an hour later.

Try Postory — schedule Threads posts alongside X and Bluesky from one dashboard. For what the Threads algorithm actually rewards once your post is live, see what works on Threads.