Welcome to a smarter reading experience

Chris Fry
The Medium Blog
Published in
3 min readMay 22, 2017

Today, we’re excited to share a project we’ve been working on these last few months, our new Medium homepage and app home screen, available on web and iOS (coming soon to Android). We launched this as an early access feature for our Medium members in March and, with their feedback, have been consistently updating and iterating on it ever since. And now, we’re ready to share it with the larger Medium community.

When we started designing this new reading experience, we went back to our core mission — to build a place for thoughtful ideas on the internet. We never wanted Medium to be yet another feed you feel obligated to check throughout the day. So this new experience is designed to deliver a satisfying, completable, and controllable experience for every reader.

New web homepage and iOS home screens

Curated topics, packaged up and delivered directly to you

Starting today, you can choose from over 50 curated topics to add to your homepage and app. Topics cover popular areas on Medium like Science, Technology, Productivity, Digital Design, Politics, Culture, Creativity, and more. So whatever your interests, we’ve got you covered. And rest assured, you’ll still see stories from the people and publications you follow — you can always find the latest from your favorites at the top of the page.

Topics are different from tags, which many of you follow already. Topics are a set of stories hand-picked by Medium staff, packaged up and delivered to your homepage.

Explore from over 50 topics. Select the ones that interest you most and have the best stories from each added directly to your homepage.

A completable reading experience

On your new homepage and app home screen, you’ll see that each topic displays four to six stories, so you can quickly and easily find the best new stories on the topics you care about most. Can’t get enough pieces on Productivity, though? Simply click the topic’s ‘more’ button and read to your heart’s content. The same is true with the people and publications you follow. More stories are always just a click away.

Click the ‘more’ link to find additional stories from that topic.

It’s early days for this new reading experience. We’ll continue to build on it in the coming months and it will be available to all Medium users over the next few days. And if you’re missing your original feed, you can return to it easily, just visit the FAQ for how. Happy reading!

Chris Fry, Head of Engineering & Product Development

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