A brief review of the Threads Android app

Abner Li | Jul 7 2023 - 12:00 pm PT

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Let’s start with the Threads icon. I was skeptical at first – too loopy – but seeing the refresh animation really explains it. Meanwhile, what’s essentially a white squiggle on a black circle/canvas is rather stark. It’s certainly different from other icons yet not that distinct at the same time, giving off a barebones quality. Will it be as iconic as the Twitter bird? That remains to be seen.

Jumping into the app, there are four tabs in the bottom bar. It’s easy to mistake the button at the center for a fifth feed, but that’s a shortcut for posting. It’s not different from Instagram’s layout and has the advantage of letting you post from anywhere in the app, but I feel that a bottom-right FAB might be more apparent.

The bottom bar is persistent and serves as a way to quickly scroll up to the top of your current feed. The Home feed only shows the app bar with the Threads logo when you pull to refresh. At the bottom of posts, you’ll find the option to like first (rather revealing), followed by options for replying, reposting, and sharing. (The custom share sheet includes “Tweet” – heh.) As a Twitter user, I’ve been conditioned to having the first button in the row open comments, and I’ve accidentally liked so many posts as a result.

The app’s light and dark themes can only be controlled via your system theme. Hopefully, an in-app toggle is coming soon. I’m usually not a fan of AMOLED black (Twitter’s Dim blue was great), but it’s surprisingly fine in Threads.

Search is barebones, while the Activity tab being represented by a heart icon is definitely from Instagram and somewhat betrays the engagement trap that is Threads and modern social media. (Initially, I kept thinking that was the tab for seeing posts I’ve liked, but that’s definitely a holdover from Twitter clients where you could customize the bottom bar.) The top filters for Replies, Mentions, and Verified are helpful and mostly persistent.

Lastly, there’s the profile page, where interesting icon choices were made. The globe opens privacy settings (I was expecting a webpage to open), and the one at the right is for settings (filters-esque).

Overall, the app is rather performant and feels like Instagram, which has been snappy for the past several years (on Android flagships). It’s very simple, and I like that, but I’m not sure if that’s due to the rushed launch or by design. The main Instagram app is very cluttered, not just with content, given how much functionality is being packed into it. I hope Threads remains simple.