Today, we’re rolling out changes to make the experience of reading and writing on Medium simpler, more streamlined, and more about what matters: your stories.

Over the last few years, we’ve made changes that added more to story pages. This was great for providing context and encouraging readers to continue exploring Medium. But sometimes less is more, especially on the story page, and we’ve heard your feedback: simplify, simplify, simplify! We’re excited to announce big changes that will help readers (and writers) refocus on reading. Internally, our nickname for this work is Project Zen because that’s our goal: a zen-like reading experience.

Here’s an overview of the changes you’ll see on your story pages. (For fun, we’ve used stories from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to help us illustrate these changes!) These features have rolled out for some users already, and will be available for everyone over the next few weeks.

The beauty of white space

We’re bringing back the single-column page layout and removing the two-column layout across all stories on desktop.

You can still find recommended stories from Medium and author bios, but these sections will now be below the story, instead of right next it. This allows readers to focus on the story without any distractions on the side.

Bigger, bolder image layout options

With our new reading experience, multiple image layouts are also making a return, including the option to add full-width (or “full-bleed”) images to your stories. For an image to be full-width, ensure that it’s large enough so that it looks crisp and clear for every reader of your story—for all the technical details, see our new Help Desk article.

If you have stories that were previously formatted as full-width images, they may not automatically revert if they’ve been updated in the last year, but you can always manually go back and update them.

Focusing on your story

We’ve locked the clap, respond, share and bookmark buttons at the top and bottom of the story, so they’re no longer a distraction as you’re reading.

We’ve also simplified the buttons at the end of stories. You can follow a writer, and subscribe to their stories via email, through buttons on the right side of the author bio. If a writer accepts tips for their stories, you’ll see a button for tips, too.

For Medium writers, here’s a few more changes you’ll see: If you’ve enabled the custom subscription promotion, it will still appear on your profile and subscribe pages, but will no longer appear on story pages.

For verified book authors, your books will be featured on your profile and the Verified Book Author Badge will appear next to your name, but your book(s) will not be featured at the bottom of the page. (We’re working on new ways to highlight your books on story pages—while keeping the bottom of story pages simplified — stay tuned!)

More to discover, less clutter

There’s a lot to discover on Medium. Once you’ve finished a story, we still wanted a way to help you dive deeper — whether that’s reading more from the author, continuing to learn about a specific topic, or subscribing to a publication. We’ve made some changes to the end of story pages to streamline those suggestions and give curated recommendations the space to succeed.

We’ve combined author and publication story suggestions, and we’re also trying something new: adding recommended lists to the end of stories.
The goal is to be intentional around what we recommend, prioritizing quality stories and lists.

And if you discover a story through a list on Medium, you’ll see a newly redesigned More from List section that lets you continue reading content from that list.

What’s next?

Everything we design has the best interest of readers and writers in mind. Time and time again, you’ve emphasized of the value of Medium as a simple, beautiful platform for writing; we hope to bring forth that (re)focus on simplicity in the newest version of the story page.

Are there other changes you’d like to see on the story page? Tell us in the comments.

A simpler page for stories on Medium was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’ve identified and organized more than 500 topics onto a single-page directory, making it easier for you to unlock the depth and breadth of stories on Medium.

Topics are one of the most foundational way writers organize ideas on Medium. But too often, it can feel like topic discovery happens by chance. We’re building intentional pathways to help you dive deep on the topics that matter most to you. Our new Explore Topics page is one of the first steps toward that vision, and a big one in terms of organizing Medium.

Where to find the topic directory

You can go to the new page directly, under the recommended topics on the homepage, under related topics on topic pages, or from the search bar.

In addition to browsing through the directory, you can also search for any topic on Medium at the top of the page. The recommended topics underneath the topic search bar are personalized for each reader, and are based on your interests and reading. If you’re curious, mine are Mindfulness, Creativity and Food (lol).

How we chose these topics for the first version — and how to help us build the next one

There are thousands of topics on Medium, and new ones are created by writers every day. Our directory is not an exhaustive list of all topics; we chose this initial list based on depth of content, a diversity of topics, and strong communities. The goal is to build context and surface ideas, so you can understand how a story fits into a broader picture.

We want this map to be ever-evolving, changing to keep up with what folks are writing and reading on Medium and reflecting the communities that converge around those stories. If there’s something you want to see here that isn’t, let us know in comments and we’ll consider it for the next version. We hope the topic directory helps you discover an unfamiliar corner of Medium, find a new writer to follow, or learn about something totally unexpected. Happy exploring!

A brand-new topic directory was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’re excited to announce that we’ve added new features to lists to give you more ways to find and explore collections of stories.

In 2021, we launched lists, expanding on the power of the bookmark and letting you organize and curate your saved stories in a new way. Since then y’all have created millions of lists.

Today, we’re taking the power of lists even further. You can now save lists from others and you’ll be notified when the lists you’ve saved are updated.

Since we launched lists, we’ve been inspired by the way you’ve saved and organized stories. Some people use them to organize their own writing and ideas, so that their audiences can easily read their best work. Some act as tastemakers, curating the best stories from across Medium to share with others. And for some, lists are a personal filing system, as they collect their favorite reads in their favorite topics.

We wanted to give you more tools and make it easier to keep up with lists you didn’t create. Now you’ll be able to save anyone’s list with the Save list icon, accessible from wherever lists show up. What you save will be available in your Library, which has a new tab for all of your saved lists.

We’ll also let you know when list curators update your saved lists. And for list curators, you’ll receive milestone notifications when your lists are saved by multiple readers. You can also see the number of times a list has been saved at the top of the list page.

Because we believe that lists can be powerful tools for finding great content on Medium, now you’ll be able to search for lists — just select the Lists tab on the Search view. You can save these lists directly from search results.

Finally, we made it easier than ever to continue reading through a list. When you’re reading a story from a list, we’ll show you additional stories from that list so you can easily move on to the next one.

We want to hear more from you. How do you use lists? What improvements would you like to see us make to lists in the future? See you in the responses.

Readers can now save your curated lists was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A big part of our work at Medium centers around earning and building trust with you, our readers, and creators. We want to be clear where we can and we want to build in public with you. In that vein, we have a couple of announcements to share.

Custom Domains are back for good

We first added the ability to add a custom domain to your Medium publication in October 2015. Then we removed the option in 2018. Then we added the option back in February 2021. Then we removed the option again in May of this year. No existing profiles or publications with custom domains were ever affected, but this back and forth isn’t the message we want to send.

You need to know that you can rely on the publishing tools we give you. So when something is experimental, we’re going out of our way to share that. A great example of that is Tips; everything we said about Tips is clear that this is not the final form of that feature. For the newest version of custom domains, I want you to know that they are here to stay and that you can rely on them.

Mobile Editor is also coming back for good

As I stated previously, we’re bringing back the mobile editor. It will be in the next version of the Android and iOS app, set to release next week.

This upcoming version is nearly identical to our old mobile editor. However, we have already started a future improvement list based on your feedback, such as allowing editors to accept/reject drafts in the apps. As we move forward, we’ll take your recommendations into consideration. This is your editor as much as it is ours, if not more so. We’re listening.

The Following Feed is now a true Following Feed

Many of you asked us for a simple, reverse chronological list of the content from the folks you follow. So we built it. And then we tested it against the older, algorithm-based feed. The true following feed worked, really well. Reading time from the following feed increased 110% (!!) as readers read from creators they hadn’t consistently seen in a while. Over the last couple of years we received and fixed a lot of bugs related to empty follow feeds and now we feel more confident knowing that if you follow someone who has written something, that content will appear in your following feed.

We know the work isn’t done and we’re thinking about how to build out additional filters to help you continue to control that feed, such as Muting support or hiding content you’ve read.

Membership Matters

We believe in the value of being a Medium member and identifying membership where it matters most. In the past, you may have seen a green halo around your avatar (or someone else’s) that indicated membership. We’ve got a new member icon that will replace that halo over time. If you’re a member, you’ll see that icon on your own avatar in the bottom left corner of most pages as well as on the avatars of members in Notifications and Responses. We also use it to call out Member-only content on post pages and in feeds.

Let’s keep talking! Have you checked out your unfiltered following feed? What’s the first draft you’re going to spin up while afk in the mobile editor next week? I’ll see you in the responses.

Custom Domains, Mobile Editor, and a True Following Feed was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hola readers and creators, I’m back to share more updates!

I mentioned in my last 3MR that we value listening to you, and we make changes based on your feedback. One thing we’ve heard is that you aren’t always satisfied with the recommendations you see on your homepage. That’s something we strive to improve, because it’s important that you’re able to truly make Medium your own. Below I have two updates that are meant to help tackle that.

Want to see less of something? That just got easier

Last year we made a Show Less Like This button, so you could tell us when your recommendations weren’t quite right for you. However, we didn’t make that button easily accessible, which led to fewer people using it.

Now, we’ve moved the Show Less Like This button front and center on our homepage, and I’m happy to say it’s working. We’re seeing that after readers use it to control what they see on Medium, they click on more stories on their homepage and spend more time reading those stories. This tells us that after readers let us know what they’re less interested in, they see more of the stories they do want to read on their homepage.

If you haven’t already, we hope you begin using the button the next time you’re on Medium.

Controlling your recommendations on Medium.com

The homepage isn’t the only place we’re updating to ensure we can offer a personalized experience.

We’ll also be updating the account sign up process on Medium.com to mimic the experience on mobile, so that it’s easier for new users to control their experience from the get-go. Moving forward, when a new user signs up for a Medium account on our website, they’ll be asked to select at least three topics they’re interested in before continuing on to the site for the first time.

Since having this information upfront will help us better decide what stories to show readers on their homepage, we hoped this change would make Medium a more enjoyable place. And I’m happy to say that this change has allowed us to more accurately show new users the stories that they want to read. When we showed this experience to a smaller group of new users, their reading time increased by 35%, in comparison to those who weren’t shown this experience. This tells us readers were seeing an increase in stories they found interesting, and that they enjoyed reading them.

Refining recommendations for current users

Already have a Medium account but want to freshen up your interests? Don’t worry! You can adjust your recommendations whenever you’d like. Head on over to the Refine Recs page when you’re logged into your Medium account and select any number of topics that interest you most.

Our goal is to create products that help you make Medium the experience you want it to be. With that in mind, let us know — how do you feel about these changes? What other product changes or additions would you like to see in order to make it easier to personalize your Medium experience?

Make Medium Yours was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Recently we’ve started being more clear about how much we value listening to our community. Or as our new CEO Tony Stubblebine says, :

“Help mold the future of Medium by telling us what is important to you.”

I’m one of the people who wants to hear from you. Seriously, hit me up in the comments.

One of the top things people asked for recently was to bring the editor back to our mobile apps. So, yes, we are working on that. We have iPhone and Android versions currently being developed and tested. We expect to launch these updates this fall.

We also heard your feedback on wanting a focused, simplified post page that prioritizes reading. We’re working on that now and we’re excited to share that with you soon.

How to report bugs

We try to catch bugs ourselves, but if you see one, let us know here.

A number of you have written in to say that follow counts on your profile are sometimes off. We’ve fixed a major cause of this bug and will continue to improve the way we track follow counts in different places.

There was also a bug in response notifications in our mobile apps where you could see who responded but not what the response said. This has been fixed in the most recent versions of our apps.

The point is, we’re working to improve Medium all the time and we’re going to talk more about it. We’re building in public and we know it’s a job that’s never done.

Making Member-Only Content Clearer

In the past, the only indication that an article was behind the members paywall was a small star.

When you hovered or clicked on the star, nothing happened.

Now when you hover over that star, you’ll see a callout identifying that content as member-only. And when you click on that star, you’ll see one of three messages under the member-only label. The message depends on who is viewing it.

That first message is the most important for authors who publish members-only content. We want to help make clear to your readers the value of signing up for a membership. So it adds more explanation about the value of membership and includes a direct link to sign up.

The other two cases are about clarity. If you do have a membership, we show a reminder of how long you’ve been a Medium member. If you’re the story’s creator, we show a confirmation that that story can earn money.

Creators make their stories member-only because they believe those stories are worth your money. We want to make that as clear as possible for everyone.

What features would you like to see on Medium? Let us know in the responses.

Listening shows up in the details was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.