The Instagram Threads update brings iOS 17 support among other minor improvements

Image credits: Lorenzo Di Cola / NurPhoto / Getty Images

After surpassing 100 million users just five days after its public debut, Instagram’s new Threads app for iOS is now available with its first update, bringing a handful of minor tweaks and tweaks, added features, and various bug fixes , including recently released iOS support. 17 public beta.

The news of the app update was shared on Threads itself by Instagram software engineer Cameron Roth. He offered a list of the features and changes the new build brings, which thankfully includes the ability to use the app on iOS 17 without crashing a critical update.

Other changes are minor quality of life improvements, not major features like adding a history feed, an edit button, support for multiple accounts, or the ability to search for posts, among other promised changes Instagram boss Adam Mosseri he said they were in the works.

Instead, the app update introduces things like the ability to double-tap the search tab to start a search and expand photos on profiles, plus support for extra tall photos that are fully viewable, a freshly refined face pill (the display of a list of people that appears at the top of the screen when there are new posts to read), among other bug fixes. For example, Threads now offers better scroll dismiss management on profiles and fixes to random images on the threadline (Threads word for the timeline). It also fixed other smaller bugs, Roth noted. The app’s binary size has also been reduced, she added.

In responses to the post, the engineer commented on other user questions about features they would like to see, replying that alt text, an accessibility feature for visually impaired and blind users that adds text to describe photos, would be available soon, while the Ability to see an indicator that you’re following someone in your followers section is coming next week. He also reiterated Threads’ plans to introduce a following feed, as promised earlier by Mosseri, and noted continued improvements in other areas of accessibility, as well as the apps’ core algorithm.

Responding to a complaint about the lack of a desktop version where Threads could be used via a web browser, Roth for example replied that it’s not as simple as turning it on.

It didn’t exist and it needs to be built, he said. So that change appears to be further down the road for now.

Threads launched while still a work-in-progress because Meta wanted to capitalize on the chaos on Twitter, which was once again prompting users to flee the Elon Musk-owned social network after it implemented caps on the number of tweets that can be viewed. claiming the reduction was necessary due to a increased data scraping activity. (Scraping has increased because Musk has raised prices for the Twitter API, leaving some developers without the ability to properly pay for Twitter data.)

As a result, other Twitter alternatives have gained traction, including Twitter’s decentralized rival Mastodon, which has seen its monthly active users increase from 1.4 million in early June to 1.9 million as of June 11. Mastodon founder and CEO Eugen Rochko commented on the increase in early July, noting that active users increased by 294,000 over the weekend and posting activity tripled. Yesterday, he boosted a post that noted that Mastodon had now hit 2 million monthly active users, suggesting that Twitter’s exodus is continuing.

Like Mastodon, Threads plans to integrate with the ActivityPub decentralized social networking protocol in the future, which would allow users to move their profiles from Threads to other servers connected to ActivityPub and interact with and follow other Mastodon users.

Twitter, meanwhile, has dismissed reports of falling traffic with new CEO Linda Yaccarino saying, without metrics, that Twitter had its biggest day of use since February last week.