For most of its life Reddit did not host images at all. Posts were links, and the pictures lived on Imgur, which existed almost entirely because Reddit needed somewhere to put them. Native image hosting arrived late, and the two eras are still visible across the site.
That history is why older posts break so reliably. A thread from 2013 points at an external host that has since cleared its archives or closed, and the discussion survives while the thing being discussed does not. Anyone who has followed a link from an old thread knows the feeling.
Images are also where a great deal of Reddit's genuine value sits. Identification subreddits, repair advice, before-and-after photographs, diagrams, and the specialist communities built around a single narrow interest — these produce reference material that exists nowhere else and gets deleted without ceremony.
Saving images from the Reddit post
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Copy the Reddit Reddit post link
Use Share and copy the link, or take the reddit.com address from your browser. Short redd.it links work too, as do direct i.redd.it image addresses.
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Enter the post address above
Paste it into the field at the top of this page, which starts reading immediately.
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Take each image on Reddit
A gallery post holds several images and each is listed separately with its dimensions. Single-image posts list one.
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Save what you need
Tap each row as it turns blue. Downloads on Android, the Files app on an iPhone.
Why Reddit images disappear so reliably
Users delete their own history in bulk, and there are popular tools built specifically to do it. A person clearing five years of comments takes every image they ever posted along with them, without any of it being controversial.
Moderators remove posts for rules that vary by subreddit and are frequently invisible to outsiders. A thread can be gone for a reason nobody outside that community would have predicted.
And the external hosts keep failing. Imgur has cleared old anonymous uploads more than once, and the image hosts of previous eras have closed entirely. A link in a saved list points at somebody else's server and is not a copy of anything.
Where a Reddit image actually lives
A post can hold an image in several ways, and that determines whether it can be fetched from here.
| Kind of post | Where the file is | Can it be saved? |
|---|---|---|
| Native image post | On Reddit's own i.redd.it host | Yes |
| Gallery post | Several files on i.redd.it | Yes, one at a time |
| Imgur link | On Imgur | Use the Imgur page here |
| Link to another site | On that site | Use its own page |
| Dead external host | Nowhere any more | Nothing remains |
The last row is the common one on anything more than a few years old. If a post from 2014 shows a broken image, the host that held it is gone and no tool can retrieve what no longer exists.
Reddit image questions
Can I save a whole gallery post?
Each image is listed separately, so you take them one at a time. Reddit gallery posts hold up to twenty images.
Do i.redd.it direct links work?
Yes, along with ordinary post addresses and short redd.it links.
Why are so many old Reddit images broken?
Because they were hosted elsewhere, usually on Imgur, and those files have since been cleared or the host closed. The post survives and the image does not.
Can I save images from a private subreddit?
No. Those need an account with access.
What size will I get?
The size stored, which for native Reddit uploads is generally what the poster provided. Reddit re-encodes less aggressively than the social platforms.
Does it work with NSFW subreddits?
If the post is publicly viewable without signing in, it behaves like any other.
Will the poster be notified on Reddit?
No. Reddit sends no notification for this.
Where do the images save on Reddit?
Downloads on Android, the Files app on an iPhone.
A post I saved has vanished.
Users delete their own history in bulk and moderators remove posts routinely. Both are ordinary on Reddit rather than unusual.
Is saving Reddit images acceptable?
Keeping reference material from a specialist community is ordinary and frequently the only way it survives. Much of what circulates on Reddit was made by somebody who was never credited in the first place, which is a reason for more care about reposting rather than less.