I typically write on a laptop, either in Notion or directly on the Medium website. From time to time, though, and depending on the circumstances, I have been using the mobile app for iPhone to write, draft, or edit stories on the go.
This won’t be possible much longer.
Where did this come from
In a recent post, Medium shared their plans to “remove story editing features from our native apps as well as controls for profile customization”.
To me, this means no more writing, editing, drafting up stories on the go, and no easy access to profile customization from the phone. That’s a huge bummer!
How Medium explains it
From Medium:
In the coming weeks, we’ll be introducing a series of changes to our Android and iOS apps, focused on a faster, smoother, and more consistent reading experience. The goal with these changes is to help readers discover more authors and topics, and to make it easier for them to read and share stories from their mobile devices. It will also be a significant step forward in creating a more unified and familiar Medium experience across Android, iOS, and our website.
With our focus on an exceptional reading experience, however, we’ve made the difficult decision to remove story editing features from our native apps as well as controls for profile customization. Both of these features will continue to be accessible from our desktop web app.
One of the most popular Medium writers, Shannon Ashley, who has been known to extensively write from her phone, expressed her feelings about this decision in a recent tweet.
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Agreed
I completely agree with Shannon here, I have to say.
Medium is right in the sense that the mobile apps need a speed bump and could run smoother. Notifications, in particular, have been troublesome on mobile for a long time.
But, overall, removing the ability to write on the go is a weird decision in this increasingly mobile world.
A workaround
Medium doesn’t say when this move is going to happen. At the time of writing, the iOS app hasn’t been updated yet.
Once it will be there, you can only edit and work on your stories on the web app.
There might be a workaround, though, I hope.
What’s this workaround? The mobile web app.
You can navigate to medium.com from the browser on your phone to write and edit your content there (hopefully).
For this to work well, you might need to actually uninstall the Medium mobile app from your device. Otherwise, the website will keep redirecting you to the mobile app. This is already annoying.
As of right now, this workaround is not working, just to let you know. At least on iOS, I can’t write from the mobile browser, UNLESS you use the desktop version of the website on your phone. You can switch to that setting on most modern mobile browsers. When I do it in Safari on iPhone, I CAN write and edit stories.
The bottom line
Medium folks are changing the platform constantly. Most recently, the newly-designed website. Change is often met with both praise and hate. These upcoming changes to the mobile app will irritate many writers, I’m sure.
I don’t like this move. Then again, I’m not sure how many writers even use the mobile apps to write or edit stories. I do it occasionally. I could live without it. If the mobile website allows for edits on the go, I’ll be fine with that. I might just delete the Medium app and switch to the web app instead.
What do you think?
