How to save photos and carousels
Still images can expose several source renditions. Here is how to compare their dimensions and choose the framing you actually want.
Saving a whole carousel
For a Threads post, paste its link into the dedicated Threads photo downloader. Instagram posts use the same result layout in the Instagram downloader. Every carousel item appears as its own card, in the order the author arranged it.
Download all saves the largest version of each item. The downloads are deliberately spaced about two thirds of a second apart — browsers silently drop a burst of simultaneous downloads to the same origin, so firing six at once would quietly give you four.
If your browser asks whether to allow multiple downloads, say yes; that prompt is what the spacing is working around.
Reading the size options
Photos are labelled by their pixel dimensions rather than a tier name, because that is the only honest description. A post might offer 1440x1800and 1080x1350 — the same picture, two sizes.
Meta publishes far more renditions than that, including a per-device ladder of near-identical widths matching iPhone screen sizes. Those are filtered out. What you see are the sizes that visibly differ.
Watch for square crops
Some renditions are centre-cropped to a square by the CDN rather than being the full frame. Those are marked square crop in the size menu. Picking one of those for a 4:5 portrait photo loses the top and bottom of the image, so unless you specifically want the square, take an uncropped size.
Why the format says JPG when the link says HEIC
Threads stores photos as HEIC and converts them to JPEG on the way out. The stored path still ends in .heic while the file delivered is a JPEG.
Naming the file from the path would hand you a .heic that is really a JPEG — bytes that Windows Photos and most editors refuse to open. The filename is taken from the format that actually arrives instead, so what you save opens everywhere.
Posts that quote other posts
A Threads post can display media it did not upload: a quoted post, a repost, or an inline embed. Those are followed, so a post that only quotes a video still gives you that video rather than reporting nothing to download.
A post's own media always takes priority — you will never be handed something it merely quoted when it uploaded media of its own.