FAQs About Medium’s New Reading Experience
These changes make it easier for readers to discover new writers (like you!) and to connect with your work
If you’ve noticed things look a bit different on Medium today, that’s because they do!
Over the past few months, we’ve been testing a new reading experience focused on sparking more connections between readers, writers, and stories. This new experience is a step toward a more interconnected Medium, where readers can always discover new voices and where branching out beyond familiar topics and writers is easier than ever.
We’re excited to announce that this new experience is available to just about everyone starting today. (If you don’t see it yet, hang tight! You should see the new experience later this month.)
Our goal was to create a faster, more connected Medium, and so far, we’ve found people are exploring Medium more deeply. Readers are visiting Medium more often, they’re finding more to read in new places, and they’re spending more time reading stories by a wider group of writers than they were before.
Read on for more about what’s new, and what these changes mean for you as a creator.
What’s new for me?
A couple things: Medium now offers a smoother, faster reading experience, thanks to back-end improvements and enhancements that come with this new layout.
As a reader, a persistent navigation menu gives you quick access to core elements of your Medium experience — your home page, lists, notifications, account settings, and more. Claps, responses, share buttons, and bookmarks are conveniently located at the bottom of your reading screen.
Also, the right side of your page updates based on what you’re viewing to feature relevant context and information. For example, on your home page, we’ll share topics and writers you might be interested in.
When you’re reading a story, you’ll see more about the author — which means when readers see your stories, they’ll see more about you.
One more update: We’ve streamlined our image formatting options to reflect this new reading experience. You’ll find more information on that here.
How is this going to help me?
Our data shows that this new experience helps writers reach more readers and build their audience. With more and more stories being presented to readers, writers are featured more prominently. Your stories, and your profile, may be displayed on the right side of stories and recommendations across Medium. We’re also highlighting what each story is about and why it appears in a reader’s feed — a feature readers and writers alike have requested.
Why does my publication look different?
If you have your own publication on Medium, you may notice that your logo now appears beneath the header image. If so, you’ll need to go into your publication’s design settings and reselect the logo. Don’t worry, it’s still here — no need to re-upload!
Anything else I should know?
We’re launching this new experience for logged-in users first, but we’ll eventually expand it to logged-out users. We’ll also continue to migrate pages into this new format over the coming weeks and months. For example, you may notice that your Stats and Settings pages haven’t changed — but we have plans to upgrade those surfaces and others in the future.
