Threads, the Twitter-like app from Instagram, is rolling out the ability for users to save a draft and take photos within the app. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the features today, noting they are designed to “make it easier to share your ideas on the fly.” The official rollout comes a few weeks after Threads began testing the features with a select number of users. At the time, Mosseri said they were two of the platform’s “most requested” features.
The new features shape Threads into more of a competitor to X (formerly Twitter), which has had drafts and a camera shortcut for as long as we can remember. However, Threads only lets you save one draft at a time, whereas X lets you save multiple. Threads users can now start writing out a post that they may want to share later, and then swipe down to save it as a draft.
As for the ability to take pictures within the app, you can do so by clicking the camera icon in the composer. Once you take a photo, you can choose to share it or retake it. The shortcut makes it easier to share photos in the moment and removes the need to first use your device’s camera app to take a photo and then attach it to a Threads post via your camera roll.
The launch of the camera shortcut comes as app researcher Nima Owji indicated that X might be looking to adopt Threads’ carousel format for displaying images. X currently displays images in a grid format, but that may change in the future.
Threads has gradually been adding new features since its launch in July 2023 to better take on X. The platform recently added a bookmarking feature, trending topics and cross-posting from Facebook to Threads.
Threads widens the gap with X, with triple the daily downloads on iOS
