Is it legal to download Threads videos?

People ask whether a Threads video download is legal because the button is easy and the post was sitting in public. Public means you can view it without being approved by the account. It does not automatically mean the creator gave you a license to copy the file onto your phone, and it certainly does not mean you may upload it as your own.

Copyright in a video or photo usually belongs to the person who made it, unless they created it for an employer or signed the rights away. That right includes making copies. A personal save of your own upload is the easy case: you already own it. A save of someone else’s clip, even from a public account, can still be a copy. Some countries have narrow exceptions for private copies, quotation, or criticism. Those exceptions are specific. “I found it online” is not one of them.

Private accounts are outside this tool on purpose. If a post only loads when you are logged in, ThreadsVideoDL will not fetch it and will not ask you to paste a password so that it can. Trying to defeat that boundary is not a feature request we will build.

Reposting is the step that most often causes a real dispute. Saving a clip to watch later is not the same act as publishing it on another account, running an ad against it, or selling it. If you want to use someone else’s Threads video in your work, ask them and keep the permission. Credit is polite and sometimes required, but credit alone is not permission.

ThreadsVideoDL’s terms say the same thing in fewer words: you must have the right to save the post, and a successful download is not a license. The site is also not affiliated with Meta, so nothing here changes Meta’s terms for the Threads app.

If you are a creator and a page on this domain is the problem, use the DMCA page. If you are deciding whether to paste a link, the useful test is simple: would you be comfortable explaining the copy to the person who made the post?