Furious social media users say they’re being bombarded with Threads notifications on Instagram – here’s how to turn them OFF on your device

It’s been almost five months since the arrival of Meta’s social networking service Threads.

But instead of enjoying the new app, many people on social media seem annoyed by the mere reminder that it exists.

Instagram users have noticed that they are being bombarded with Threads notifications trying to switch them over to the new app.

One user said she still receives Threads notifications on Instagram even after deleting her Threads account.

If you keep seeing push notifications about Threads on Instagram, here’s how to turn them off.

Affected users took to

Another user said: ‘INSTAGRAM please stop giving Threads notifications’ and added: ‘Your app sucks.’

Another posted: “Threads notifications are now coming in to the linked Instagram account…Is there a way to deactivate the threads account?”

One X user called Threads “an epic fail” because it likes to “force notifications through Instagram.”

When a user receives a notification on Instagram, the heart icon at the top of the app will have a small pink dot.

By clicking the heart icon, users can usually see Instagram-related activity, such as another user liking or commenting on a photo.

But now Instagram notifications let users know that someone “recently posted a new thread” — even though Threads and Instagram are two separate apps.

Meta owns both Threads and Instagram – as well as other social media platforms WhatsApp and Facebook – and may be looking to increase the number of Threads users.

Instagram users can temporarily disable all ‘push notifications’ (the ones that appear on the smartphone screen when the app is not open) by going to the app’s settings.

However, this does not stop the heart icon from turning pink when Meta wants to tell us about activity on Threads once we are in the Instagram app.

MailOnline contacted Meta about how to stop Threads notifications on Instagram for good.

Meta is known to have built the Threads app to be very tightly integrated with the Instagram app.

For example, when people originally start a Threads account, the app only uses their Instagram account username.

Additionally, anyone who wants to use Threads must have an Instagram account – so there is no Threads without Instagram.

And until recently, people who signed up for Threads were stuck with that unless they wanted to lose their Instagram account too.

Only earlier this month did Meta start allowing users to delete their Threads account while keeping their Instagram account.

Now, with Threads notifications on Instagram, Meta may be trying to drive users to the new app to grow its user base and help it compete with Elon Musk’s X (formerly known as Twitter).

Social media consultant Rhea Freeman said she wasn’t surprised to see Threads notifications on Instagram, as she had expected Meta to benefit from the close integration between the two.

“As Threads seems to have gone a bit quiet, it’s a way to remind people and also indicate that things are still happening,” she told MailOnline.

Threads got off to a decent start when it released in July, but it has lost quite a bit of stream since then and seems unlikely to take over X.

An impressive 70 million people downloaded Threads in the two days after its launch on July 5 – a figure that reached 150 million within a week.

However, the number of people actually using the app every day has fallen from 49 million on July 7 to just nine million at the beginning of August, according to Zekerweb.

However, according to Apptopia, Threads managed to recover in October by maintaining around 33 million daily active users.

Still, this is small compared to X, which had about 240 million daily active users last month, according to DemandSage.