Substack Release Notes

Whether you’re spending your Substack summer tinkering with your existing newsletter or podcast or launching your first one, we’re shipping features that make it easier to publish, customize, and distribute your work, and engage with your audience. We look forward to hearing what’s most useful and what you want more of. Here’s the latest.

Paid subscriber Perks

Subscriber Perks are a new feature that lets you give your paid audience something extra beyond traditional paywalled content, like discount codes, downloadable resources, or invites to live sessions. Perks you create will appear under the new “Perks” tab on your publication. It’s another way to thank the paid subscribers who support your work and encourage others to upgrade. This is available to publishers who have payments enabled.

Here are some perks publishers are already offering their paid subscribers:

• Anna Eleri Hart’s U.S. shopping guide
• I LIKE NETWORKING’s curated list of people to meet at SXSW London
• Caroline Chambers’s six-day meal plan

[From left] Perks available for paid subscribers of Anna Eleri Hart, I Like Networking, and Caroline Chambers

Learn more about subscriber perks in our Help Center.

Saved Notes

You can now save Notes on iOS and Android directly in the Substack app. Saved Notes live in your Substack profile. Just click on the ⋯ in the top right corner to access them.

This dedicated space for saved Notes within your profile is like your curated reading list, or as Ru Rao put it, the place to revisit a Note that’s an “absolute gem.”

Scheduled Chats

You can now schedule Chat threads just like you schedule Notes and posts. Scheduling chats is a great way to build community by connecting regularly with your audience between posts. Schedule a chat by going to the Chat tab, clicking the orange button to start a new Chat thread, and selecting “Schedule” in the thread settings

Shea Serrano, who writes Good Movie, scheduling a Chat thread

Polls

You can now post polls to Substack Notes. Polls are another way to continue the conversation with your audience by surfacing their opinions, preferences, and priorities. It’s just one click for them and can lead to a gold mine of ideas for you.

You can embed a poll in a Note or a post:

• In a Note, click on the Poll icon in the bottom of the Note screen.
• In a post, click “More” on the far right side of the text editor and select Poll from the dropdown menu.

Stephanie H. Murray, the writer of Family Stuff, recently restacked another publisher’s writing and polled her own audience to gauge their reaction to a parenting etiquette question. She received over 400 responses.

Text formatting

Superscript and subscript

Both superscript and subscript are now available in the post editor. If your writing regularly includes footnotes, scientific notation, exponents, ordinals (1ˢᵗ), or trademark symbols, select “Superscript” from the text editor dropdown. If you frequently use chemical formulas (H₂O) or mathematical notation (x₁), select “Subscript.” We hope this comes in handy for you deep writers, researchers, and thinkers.

Text colors and highlight text

You can now change colors and highlight text you want your readers to pay extra close attention to. You can find the text colors and highlight feature in the post text editor.

Podcasts

A redesigned podcast player

We made updates to our podcast and video player to increase engagement by giving your audience more controls. Subscribers can now adjust playback speed directly from the player, listen to episodes offline, and set a sleep timer to better control auto-advance behavior.

The redesigned podcast player puts the audience in the driver's seat with updated controls. Caleb Hearon’s subscribers can now download his extended interviews for offline viewing or add episodes to their playback queue.

Podcast distribution support

You can now distribute podcasts hosted anywhere to Substack with the same RSS feed and dynamically inserted ads. Get started here.

Distribute your podcast on Substack with the same RSS feed and ads

Tracking prefixes

You can also now add tracking prefixes directly to your show from your Substack dashboard. Tracking prefixes are third-party tools that give you accurate download data across all listening apps. This feature is a part of a growing toolkit to help you run and grow your podcast business on Substack.

You can toggle on tracking prefixes from your podcast settings

Filter subscriber questions in Chat

If you’re running a live video Q&A with your subscribers, you can now filter the chat to show questions only. It’s available on web, iOS, and Android.

Run a focused Q&A by filtering for questions only

Your video settings all in one place

We’ve unified all your video settings in the Substack editor, making editing and publishing more intuitive for creators. Here are some key changes:

• Podcast controls, free previews, clipping, and other options like transcripts and auto-publish to YouTube now live in one place.
• An improved clipping experience includes full-screen viewing, plus an immersive creation flow with control over captions and layout.

The updated video and clip editing experience, now with all settings in one place, as seen on Sarah Stewart Holland’s Good News Brief for Pantsuit Politics.

Learn more about podcasts in our Help Center.

MCP for stats and analytics

We’re introducing Model Context Protocol (MCP) support for bestsellers on Substack, offering new ways to understand your publication stats by integrating with tools like Claude and ChatGPT. You can get up-to-date analytics about your publication’s performance, subscribers, and engagement over time.

MCP for stats and analytics is available for bestsellers. Learn more about the Substack MCP in our Help Center.

There’s more to come soon. Let us know what’s working and what else you’d like to see, in a Note, in a post, or by restacking.

Today we’re introducing the next phase of Substack’s native sponsorships program, with an inaugural cohort of flagship partners who are collectively investing millions of dollars into creators on Substack. If you are a Substack bestseller who is interested in participating and shaping the program, you can publish your Creator Kit now.

The deal most of the internet offers creators goes something like this:

We’ll give you reach if you give us your audience. Perform for the algorithm. Hope for a minority share of a platform’s own revenue, or figure out the money part yourself. Build your following on our platform, under our rules, subject to our priorities—and if any of that changes, good luck.

Most creators accept this deal because they feel like they have no choice. The platforms are where the audiences are. And over time, the system shapes you. You learn to make things the algorithm rewards instead of things you believe in.

Substack is built on a different theory: Give publishers a direct connection to the people who believe in them. Let people pay for the work they value.

We know that model works. Now more than 100,000 publishers make money on Substack through the subscription model. The top 10 collectively make more than $100 million a year, while tens of millions of subscribers across the network give creators the opportunity to build both audience and business in one place.

At the same time, some of the most successful creators have been finding ways to expand their business and better serve their community by partnering with organizations that help them offer more perks, invest more deeply in their editorial, and introduce new features for subscribers.

Emily Sundberg’s sponsored letter with Hinge ranked as Feed Me’s fourth-most-engaged letter in 2024. She wrote about this herself that year: advertisements on Feed Me, done right, are not compromising her audience-first model.

Lenny Rachitsky built his own Product Pass — a collection of complementary product access and trials to companies like Granola, valued at more than $30,000 and offered as a perk to his Annual and Insider subscribers.

Dwarkesh Patel reimagined one of his most-read essays and brought it to life as a video.

Ochuko Akpovbovbo collaborated with a design partner to unveil a redesign for her publication, as seen on .

These creators, along with their independent agents and managers, handled this work themselves. They had to figure out the outreach, negotiate the terms, manage the relationships, and handle the logistics, on top of the work of showing up for their subscribers.

Making something great is hard enough. We want to help make the rest easy.

Substack’s native sponsorships program makes great partnerships simple. We’re excited to work with our flagship partners, including Yahoo Scout, Whatnot, Granola, Balenciaga, T-Mobile, Polymarket, and Uber. These forward-thinking brands recognize that some of the most interesting conversations happening on the internet are driven by writers and creators on Substack. They’ll be building with, and investing millions of dollars in, the creators who choose to participate

These are not arbitrarily inserted ads. They are direct partnerships between brands and publishers who have already built robust audience-first businesses.

Creators choose who they work with. They set the creative direction. They keep full editorial independence. Our job is to take care of what they shouldn’t have to—the matchmaking, the infrastructure, the logistics—so they can stay focused on the work.

To help these publishers control their experience with sponsorship-related revenue, we’ve built Creator Kits, a new tool for creating a media kit for potential brand partners, available today to bestsellers. By publishing your Creator Kit, you can let us know you’re interested in brand collaborations. It is also your entry point into what’s coming next: a partnership platform where you will be able to connect directly with brands investing in the Substack creator ecosystem.

Learn More: How do I set up a Creator Kit on Substack?

Subscriptions are the ultimate proof point of an audience-first media business. Sponsorships, when correctly aligned, can amplify the value of the direct relationship between publisher and audience, creating a stronger foundation for a growing business and community.

Other platforms have built a model that rewards performance. We’re building one that rewards trust.

The system should serve the people who use it, not the other way around. For creators, that means helping you make money doing the work you believe in.

Substack bestsellers, you can publish your Creator Kit today to signal your interest in brand collaborations and the forthcoming partnership platform launch. If you haven’t built your paid subscription base yet, here are some resources that can help you on your way.

As we build tools that make creator-brand partnerships easier and more effective, interested brands and agencies can learn more and connect with us here.

Since its founding, Substack has sought to create the best possible conditions for cultures of many varieties to flourish online. Doing so often involves difficult trade-offs, but on top of our core model—where we only earn when writers, artists, journalists, musicians, and so on earn—we’ve managed to chart a distinctive course relative to other platforms. We hope that people, their work, and the communities that form around it all can be more real here than has historically been possible elsewhere, where massive scales and advertising models seem to drain reality even from good-faith creators over time.

A few months ago, we shared this vision for what Substack can be: a place where you can build your own corner of the internet. That means your branding, your community, and your rules, without sacrificing the network that helps you grow. Today, we’re excited to announce the next feature in that effort, which we think will make it possible for even more people to be fully themselves and at home on Substack. We call it Reply Rules, and it combines a couple of elements:

1. Anyone can now set their own Reply Rules, which will appear to anyone replying to them: in comments on their posts, in replies to their Notes, or in Chat.
2. There is now a system that learns every time you hide a reply and preemptively hides replies it thinks you would hide yourself (you can always see these and un-hide them, which the system will also learn from).

Soon, this system will read your Reply Rules when you set them and use them as guidance for its actions, in addition to what it sees you do. Our hope is that it gives you more time to focus on what matters: creating the work that encourages people to stop by your corner of the internet in the first place.

Learn how to set up your Reply Rules here.

Your house, your rules

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has followed Substack’s arc over the years that we try to think carefully about how moderation of various kinds can help or hurt writers, artists, journalists, musicians, and other creatives. To us, the following principles are of the utmost importance:

• Putting power in the hands of individuals and communities, rather than platform owners;
• Reducing administrative burdens—it shouldn’t require extensive learning, mastering interfaces, or fiddling with controls to have a good experience; and
• Facilitating clear zones of ownership. Substack may be lightly moderated, but in your house, your rules should apply.

Reply Rules reflect these values, and use contemporary technologies to make it easier than it’s ever been for Substacks to scalably set and maintain the kind of order that matters to them, using natural language and natural behaviors. Take a look at how some creators are already using Reply Rules to shape the conversations in their communities:

Write the rules you want. Hide the content you think shouldn’t be there. Let the system learn from you and, eventually, take much of the burden of this work off your plate.

Reply Rules are available today to all publications with their language set to English. To get started, go to your publication settings.

Who changed your life today? Who stretched your way of seeing the universe? Who challenged you to think deeper about the culture around you, or to question the state of the political world? Who introduced you to a new song, a brand-new way of cooking, or even a new rose to plant in your garden? If you’ve been on Substack for a while, my hope is you’ve found these people here.

Because that’s always been part of Substack’s mission: to make good on the internet’s promise as a place for the universal exchange of knowledge and ideas. We want to make it easier for you to stumble upon ideas that not only enrich your life but that challenge your thoughts and sharpen your thinking.

Today, we’re cracking open the world of ideas even further as we introduce new translation features, starting with the ability to translate Notes written in English into 15 languages, or into English from over 100 languages.

That means you can now read and engage with writers and creators anywhere from Trondheim to Tokyo. What’s more, in the coming weeks, we’ll also be adding translation to posts, meaning you can take a deeper dive into your favorite writers’ work, wherever they are across the globe.

For writers, this will open the world to your work. The post you publish in English will be able to find readers in Istanbul. The newsletter you write in Japanese can build an audience in Buenos Aires. A poet in Lisbon and a food writer in Marseille are no longer separated from each other—or from the readers who would love their work—by the language they happen to write their Notes in. The addressable readership for every writer will have grown meaningfully larger.

Because ideas should not be limited to geography or thwarted by language. Good, smart, interesting ideas should be allowed to flourish wherever there is a willing mind to engage.

I’ve had the chance to preview these features, and the writers I’ve discovered have already expanded my horizons. Just this weekend, I stumbled upon a discussion about the ethical responsibility of AI from an Italian writer I had hitherto not heard of. And I found intellectual kinship with a Dutch writer who somehow managed to articulate every thought and feeling I’ve had over the past few years about the blandification of culture. A young Japanese writer living in Barcelona taught me the word komorebi (it means “sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees,” and is apparently as much a philosophical dictum as it is a visual effect), whilst a chef in the south of France just made my life infinitely better by sharing an orange miso sauce that works like a dream with raw fish.

The point is, you don’t have to cross a border, get on a plane, or even speak another language now to connect with ideas that might change your life. Translations bring the world of ideas to your doorstep.

We’re still in the early days, and translation, especially at scale, is technically and culturally complex. And we have many more languages to go. But the translation of Notes is an exciting starting place, and your feedback can help us make it even better: when you see a translated Note, click the “translated” icon to tell us how we did.

The appetite for this kind of exchange is already clear in the numbers. Writers and creators everywhere are building real audiences and livelihoods on Substack. As of today, nearly 100,000 publishers are earning money on Substack globally, including almost 30,000 outside the U.S. In Europe, creators are now collectively earning more than $90 million annually.

And we’re continuing to invest in that community. We’re bringing on close to completion on nine new partnerships hires to support writers and creators in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, the Nordics, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and Japan, joining a dedicated U.K. team. Alongside these new hires, we are also expanding Substack Defender, our legal support program for publishers who face legal uncertainty or pressure because of their work—a core pillar of our commitment to a free press.

All of this is in service of what the internet, at its best, can do: make the world wider and closer at the same time. If you’ve been thinking about starting your own Substack and sharing your ideas with a global audience, come to one of our upcoming international masterclasses. We’d love to meet you.

UPCOMING MASTERCLASS DATES

Europe

Head of Partnerships, Spain: Marcos García @Substack
Thursday, April 23 | 15:30 CEST [RSVP]

Head of Partnerships, France: Renée Kaplan
Wednesday, May 20 | 17:00 CEST [RSVP]

Head of Partnerships, Italy: Chiara Santoro
Wednesday, May 20 | 15:00 CEST [RSVP]

Head of Partnerships, Netherlands: Margot James
Thursday, May 28 | 17:00 CEST [RSVP]

North America

Head of Partnerships, Canada: Mark Swierszcz
Thursday, May 14 | 12:00 PM EDT [RSVP]

Asia-Pacific

Head of Partnerships, Australia and New Zealand: Annabelle Russell
Tuesday, May 5 | 8:00 PM AEST [RSVP]

This month, we’re shipping a range of updates that give you more control over your publishing workflow—from scheduling Notes in advance to new live video tools, post templates, and design details that make your publication feel unmistakably yours. Here’s what’s new.

Post templates

You can now create and save templates for longform posts, directly within the post editor. If your workflow includes recurring elements like calls to action, disclaimers, section structures, sponsorship placements, or code blocks, you can save them once and reuse them in new drafts instantly.

This removes repetitive setup work and helps you stay consistent without starting from scratch each time. Build your format once, and reuse it whenever you need it.

Drop caps

Enable a drop cap—the large, stylized first letter that opens a piece of writing—for your Substack publication. You can turn this on in the Website Editor in your publication settings. From there, click “Posts,” toggle on “Drop caps,” and click “Save.” Visible on web, drop caps are a small detail that can give your writing a more considered, editorial feel.

Live video: more control over how you stream and manage events

We’ve expanded Substack Live with new tools for publications running regular video programming:

• Choose where you stream: You can now decide which publication to go live from each time you stream, instead of being limited to your primary publication. This is available across iOS, Android, and web.
• From the new live video management dashboard page on desktop, you can now:
  • Schedule on behalf of a host. Contributors and admins can now schedule a livestream for another creator on your publication.
  • Edit scheduled streams. You can now update the title, timing, host, and notification settings for any scheduled stream after it’s been created. If a host needs to swap out or a time needs to shift, you can handle it directly from the dashboard without canceling and starting over.
  • Have quick access to stream keys. Contributors, admins, owners, and hosts can now view and copy stream keys directly.

Schedule Notes

You can now schedule Notes to publish at a specific time, on web, iOS, and Android. Write in advance, set a publishing time, and your Note will go out automatically. All scheduled Notes appear in your Notes Drafts tab, where you can continue editing right up until they publish.

• On web, click the 📅 icon in the composer
• On iOS and Android, tap “…” and select “Schedule”
• Choose a publishing time in your local time zone
• Find and edit your scheduled Notes anytime in the Drafts tab

Refine your feed with clearer controls

The “show less” control in your feed is now more visible and easier to use. When you see a Note you’re not interested in, tap the X to tell us why—whether it’s not relevant, feels like clickbait, or just isn’t what you’re looking for. Your feedback helps shape what you see going forward, so your feed stays focused on the work you care about.

Subscribe homepage block

The subscribe block—a customizable banner that prompts homepage visitors to subscribe—allows you to tailor your message to free, paid, and founding members. Now you can also customize its color and add a logo, giving you more ways to make it feel like yours.

Callout block

Add callout blocks to your posts: visually distinct, formatted containers that let a piece of text stand apart from the rest of your writing. Use them to highlight a key idea, surface a quote from another writer, flag a note to readers, or draw attention to something you want to make sure doesn’t get skipped. It’s a clean way to add visual rhythm or reference something you want your audience to see.

These updates are available now

We’re continuing to build tools that give you more control over how you publish and how you connect with your audience. As always, let us know what’s working and what you’d like to see next, in a Note, in a post, or by restacking.

Recording Studio

Today, we’re launching the Substack Recording Studio, a built-in studio that makes it easier than ever to pre-record and publish a show on Substack. Substack Studio, currently available on desktop only, lets you record a solo video or a conversation with up to two guests and publish it when you’re ready, with auto-generated clips and thumbnails included.

Until now, creating video on Substack meant going live, or stitching together a separate stack of tools: a recording platform, a way to create and distribute clips, and something to design a thumbnail. Substack Studio brings all of those tools into one place. And as with live video, anything you share is automatically distributed through the Substack network—in the mobile app, on the web, and on the big screen with Substack TV. Here’s what’s new:

Recording Studio

Record a conversation without going live and publish it when you’re ready. On desktop, simply click the Recording Studio button under “Create.”​​ You can invite up to two guests, who can join from desktop or the Substack mobile apps. After they accept your invite, they’ll automatically join the preview room, and you can start recording. Once you’re done, you’ll get the same auto-generated clips and thumbnails you’d get from a live video.

Rachel Braun of Braun & Brains recently used Substack Studio to sit down with Express Checkout’s Nate Rosen for a deep dive into the trends reshaping the snack industry—recording, publishing, and clipping the entire episode using just Substack tools.

Publication branding

Hosts can now add a publication logo or wordmark directly into any show they record on Substack, whether it’s live or in the Studio. You can adjust it to appear in the top left, top right, or bottom left of the frame, and can also upload a custom asset if you want to add something specific to a show. This is the first step toward giving every show on Substack its own distinct look and feel.

Publisher Tara Palmeri recently added her Red Letter logo to an episode with congressional reporter Juliegrace Brufke.

Screen sharing

Hosts and co-hosts can share their screen mid-conversation to walk through whatever they’re referencing: a chart, a dataset, a news article, or a piece of writing. The shared screen is captured in the final recording, and is available for both livestreams and those taped in the Studio on desktop. For now, screen sharing is visual only; sound from shared content isn’t captured yet, though that’s coming soon.

Azeem Azhar, an AI and exponential technologies expert, recently used screen sharing to give viewers a demo on how he runs his AI agent system.

Editable thumbnails

In December, we introduced automated thumbnails that generate as soon as your live video ends. Now, across both live and recorded video, you can pick the frame and customize the thumbnail text to match.

How to Feel Alive publisher Catherine Price customized the thumbnail text for her conversation with author Dan Coyle using Substack’s new thumbnail editing tools.

Learn more about the Substack Recording Studio in the Help Center.

The Substack Recording Studio and these new tools are available now. It’s worth giving them a try: recent data shows that creators who have used audio or video on Substack in the past 90 days have grown their revenue 50% faster than those who haven’t. Substack Studio makes getting started a lot easier.

To learn more, join us for a live virtual masterclass on Wednesday, April 1, at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET. We’ll walk through the Substack Recording Studio, share best practices and strategy, and answer your questions live.

RSVP now

We’ve turned off comments for this post. As always, feel free to share your perspective in a Note, in a post, or by restacking.

Today, we’re introducing a series of updates across Notes, your dashboard, live video, and your feed. These updates make it easier to draft, manage, and publish your work on Substack.

Save Notes as drafts

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Save Notes as drafts

You can now save Notes as drafts on web and iOS, with Android coming this week. If you start writing a Note and hit cancel, you’ll have the option to save it instead. When you return to the composer, you’ll find your saved Notes in a new Drafts tab.

Take Your Time publisher Dianna Cohen saves a draft of one of her Notes.

This makes it easier to capture ideas as they come to you, refine them over time, and publish when you’re ready.

Learn more about drafting and publishing Notes in our Help Center.

Pin multiple posts to your homepage

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Pin multiple posts to your homepage

You can now pin multiple posts to your homepage to control what visitors see first.

Pinning a post to the homepage of publication Silver Bulletin.

To pin a post:

• Tap the pencil icon on your homepage
• Search for the post you want to feature
• Select it to pin

Learn more about customizing your homepage in our Help Center.

Export your publisher stats as a CSV file

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Export your publisher stats as a CSV file

Publisher stats are now exportable as a CSV file, directly from your dashboard. Exports reflect whatever filters and views you’re currently using, so you can pull the exact data you need. That might mean analyzing audience growth or tracking traffic trends over time, all in a format you can work with offline.

To export, select the time range you’d like to analyze in your publication dashboard, then click “Download CSV” from the menu.

Center, right align, or justify your text

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Center, right align, or justify your text

You can now center, right align, or justify text in your posts from the web editor toolbar, giving you more control over how your writing looks on the page.

Hide revenue and subscriber counts

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Hide revenue and subscriber counts

If you’d prefer not to see revenue and subscriber counts on your dashboard, you can now hide them. This lets you keep those metrics out of view while you focus on your work.

You can toggle this setting on or off in your publication settings.

Learn more about Substack’s metrics in our Help Center.

Improved code formatting

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Improved code formatting

Code blocks now support syntax highlighting. Language is detected automatically, so your snippets render with consistent formatting, spacing, and line numbers, across web, mobile, and email. Readers can copy the full snippet with a single click. This works everywhere your posts show up, including email.

What’s included:

• Syntax highlighting
• Automatically detects language on paste from VS Code
• Indentation shortcuts (tab / shift+tab)
• Drag, cut, and paste support
• Line numbers for reference
• One-click copy to clipboard

def fibonacci(n):

    if n <= 1:

        return n

    a, b = 0, 1

    for _ in range(2, n + 1):

        a, b = b, a + b

    return b

print([fibonacci(i) for i in range(10)])

Learn more about using code blocks in our Help Center.

Manage live videos in one place

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Manage live videos in one place

We’ve added a new section to your creator dashboard for managing live videos. Scheduled streams, recordings, and drafts were previously spread across different areas. They’re now organized in one place within your dashboard.

In this new section, you can:

• View scheduled live videos
• Access recordings of past livestreams
• See unpublished recordings of live videos
• Edit or cancel scheduled streams directly from the dashboard

Brandon Kyle Goodman’s dashboard showing their past livestreams.

This gives you a clearer overview of your live video workflow and reduces the need to jump between different tools to manage upcoming or past broadcasts.

Learn more about managing live video in our Help Center.

These updates are available now

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These updates are available now

We’re continuing to invest in improving the core parts of Substack—the tools you use every day to publish, design, and understand your work. We hope these updates give you more flexibility in how you publish, manage, and discover work on Substack.

Thanks for building with us.

We’ve turned off comments for this post. As always, feel free to share your perspective in a Note, in a post, or by restacking.

When we introduced Polymarket embeds in 2024, creators started weaving prediction market data into their analysis, from election forecasts to AI breakthroughs to economic policy. As more creators have integrated and responded to this data in their work, we’ve been building tools to support how they reference and discuss it on Substack.

Today, in partnership with Polymarket, we’re introducing native tools that make it easier to share, discuss, and debate prediction market data directly on Substack. Polymarket has also joined our sponsorships pilot, supporting a cohort of creators who integrate these tools into their work.

What are prediction markets, and why do they matter?

Prediction markets are an emerging technology that aggregates real-time estimates of what will happen in the future. While the stock market lets people trade shares of companies, and the price reflects an estimate of how much a business is worth, Polymarket lets people trade shares of future events, like elections, economic trends, and scientific breakthroughs. The price reflects a market estimate of how likely an outcome is to happen.

So while the stock market can tell you how much traders think Nvidia is worth, Polymarket can tell you whether traders think the Fed will raise interest rates, that Ukraine will join NATO this year, or that One Battle After Another will win Best Picture at the Oscars. As with the stock market, these prices offer powerful insights into how participants are assessing the likelihood of different outcomes—everyone is free to disagree about how much Nvidia is actually worth, or what movie will win, but everyone still sees the same ticker of what it’s trading at, up to the second.

What’s new

When we first introduced Polymarket embeds, creators had to paste external links into posts. Even with that extra step, one in five of Substack’s top 250 highest-revenue publications started using them. Today, we’re making it easier with three new features, now available on iOS, Android, and web:

Notes embeds

Polymarket data can now be embedded directly in Notes, not just posts. This means you can quickly reference a prediction market that automatically refreshes with the latest odds, while sharing commentary, responding to news, or sparking a discussion—whether you’re writing a full article or a quick note.

Writer and podcaster Konstantin Kisin referenced market expectations in a note about different timelines for Keir Starmer’s potential exit as U.K. prime minister, while tech analyst Azeem Azhar used a Polymarket embed in Notes to comment on how Anthropic’s research progress moved prediction market sentiment around AI model performance.

Search within Substack

You can now search for Polymarket data directly from the post editor or Notes composer. No need to open a new tab, find the right market, and copy a link back. Just search, select, and insert an embed directly alongside your analysis.

Dynamic visualizations

Polymarket embeds now adapt their visual format to match the type of question you’re referencing—a yes-or-no question looks different from one with multiple possible outcomes. Substack automatically selects the right format to ensure that the data is clear and easy to read.

For example, when Cartoons Hate Her embedded data on the Democratic favorite for 2028—with the caveat that it’s still “way too early to say”—it automatically displayed as a multi-candidate ranking. When shit you should care about embedded a question about whether the U.S. will confirm before 2027 that aliens exist, it displayed as a simple percentage.

These tools are available to start using today. You’ll find instructions in our Help Center, and if you publish something using the tools, tag Substack Team—we’d love to see what you’re working on.

Today, we’re rolling out a set of updates designed to give publishers more control over how their work appears and reaches their subscribers, from new formatting options for publications and recipes to scheduling livestreams on Android and desktop.

Publication design settings

We’ve made a number of updates to the theme editor that make it easier than ever to shape the experience subscribers have when they land on your publication’s homepage.

Here’s what’s new:

• Custom header and footer: Resize your wordmark and adjust its placement.
• Faster homepage editing: Click any section in the homepage preview to adjust its settings directly. You can also drag and drop sidebar modules to reorder them.
• Welcome page colors: Set a background color for your welcome page independent of your main homepage.
• Undo after saving: Made a change you didn’t mean to? Undo appears right after you save.

You’ll find these settings in the same place as before: Settings → Website → Theme.

Learn more about customizing your publication in our Help Center.

Wendy MacNaughton, the author of DrawTogether, used these updates to create a homepage that’s both beautiful and easy to navigate.

Drop Site News uses the custom layouts to add social links and highlight work from their contributors.

For more ideas, take a look at Sub Club’s distinctive logo placement and The Preamble’s expert use of the footer.

Recipe embeds (beta)

Recipe embeds are now available in beta on Substack, offering a clean, structured way to publish recipes inside a post.

If you’ve ever shared a recipe as plain text, you know it’s not ideal: ingredients and steps can get buried, readers have to scroll back and forth while cooking, and recipes aren’t always surfaced well by search engines. Recipe embeds solve these issues by giving recipes a dedicated format that’s easy to follow, save for later, and built for discovery.

To add a recipe embed to an upcoming post, open the post editor and choose More → Recipe.

Recipe embeds can include:

• An image
• Title and description
• Prep and cook time
• Ingredients and directions
• Optional descriptive tags for meal categories, cuisines, etc.

And recipe embeds automatically generate the proper metadata so search engines can index and surface your recipe, helping new readers discover your Substack.

Hetty Lui McKinnon, the author of To Vegetables, With Love, put the new format to use in her latest recipe, for napa cabbage and crumbled tempeh rice noodles.

Learn more about using recipe embeds in our Help Center.

Live video scheduling on Android and desktop

You can now schedule livestreams on Android and desktop, giving you more time to promote your event and build momentum ahead of going live. Each scheduled stream generates an RSVP link that subscribers can add to their calendar and share across Substack and social channels. Email and in-app reminders help bring your audience back when it’s time to tune in.

Learn more about scheduling a livestream in our Help Center.

Try them out today

We’re focused on building tools that help publishers own their space on the internet and connect meaningfully with their communities. Whether you’re refreshing your publication or experimenting with new formats like recipes and live video, we hope you’ll try out these updates and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

TL;DR

Custom themes are finally coming to the apps! Starting today on iOS, you’ll see this when you tap on Substacks you subscribe to from a new row atop the feed that makes it easy to keep up with your favorites. Soon, themed views will be everywhere in the apps, and this is just the beginning of a major effort to make Substacks richer and more customizable.

For years, anyone writing or creating online has faced a choice:

• Build your own website or app, reflecting your taste and featuring your aesthetics and branding, and apply your rules for commenters and community members, but watch it fail to get much attention or traffic, especially over time, without costly marketing efforts on other platforms.
• Share your work directly on those other platforms to meet audiences where they are, but compromise on style and branding, cede some or all ownership of the relationships you build, and accept the rules of the platform owners, which can change dramatically and upend your livelihood overnight.

It’s a little like owning your own small shop versus operating in a mall. Your unique store might be laid out and managed exactly as you—and your customers—want, but if you cannot attract enough people, if too many customers prefer the convenience and centrality of a mall, you’ll struggle to remain afloat. The mall’s scale advantage often wins with audiences, even when they admit that your unique vision on its own is superior, even when it’s common to hear people lament: “I hate the mall.”

Online, audiences flock to massive social media or content platforms, ignoring even the most beautiful and well-run individual sites and apps. Writers, journalists, artists, musicians, chefs, critics, and creators of all kinds need to reach people at scale in order to earn sustainable livings, and so they wind up going where the audiences are, abandoning any hope of control or customization. And once they’ve built an audience on a platform, they’re locked in: they cannot take their audience with them if they leave.

Substack has long worked to offer a different model: one where the benefits of scale accrue to creators, not just to platform owners, while as much of the value of independence is preserved as is possible. You might say that our vision is that of a thriving commercial district within a city: the benefits of density and connection without the homogenizing pressures of a mall. Much of our work over the past few years has been to make Substack a place large numbers of people like to visit, while never changing that it’s a place any creative can choose to leave without loss. Here, you own your relationships. You also get growth through scale and network effects, through our ranked home feed, our recommendations system, and features like live video and chat, which together help people discover you and your work, often signing up to become paid subscribers.

Now, we’re taking a small first step on a big effort to make this balance even better.

Starting today on iOS, you’ll see a row of Substacks you’re subscribed to right at the top of the app, with priority given to those with new posts. Tapping one brings subscribers into that Substack’s world, with its custom colors, typefaces, logos, and the newest post right at the top. Below that top post is a feed of notes and posts from that Substack, so subscribers can easily dive deeper into its world. It’s more like visiting a unique place, less like “consuming content” in a generic platform view.

See a publication's most recent post at the top of their custom feed, complete with in-line expansion for easy reading.

But this is just a first step. Soon, we’ll be introducing features that will dramatically enrich what Substacks can be.

In the future, a Substack feed will be able to include not only its creator’s own work but also that of their community of subscribers, and even of other Substacks they recommend. All of this will be fully optional and controllable; some creators will want to curate a space with many contributors, while others will be happy to keep their Substack’s feed focused solely on their own work or that of a small set. For those who include others in their feeds, we’ll make it extremely easy to set moderation rules and apply them to their communities.

Whether your Substack is a solo effort, a salon, or a whole scene will be entirely up to you. For Substacks where the community is a significant part of the value, we think this can be a game changer. Your ability to customize how your space appears within the Substack app, combined with optional community feeds and the flexible moderation tools that support and guide them, will make Substack uniquely balanced in a way that works for creators and subscribers alike.

Together, these features will let writers, journalists, artists, musicians, and everyone else build their own inimitable and authentic spaces, with unique moderation dynamics and whatever level of community involvement they want. Subscribers can get an even closer look at how a creator thinks, what they’re interested in, and the community they’ve built on Substack. And everyone will still benefit from the Substack network; indeed, curated Substack spaces should lead to more cross-pollination and subscriber growth than ever, as audiences will see more from around the network and indeed around the Internet in every space.

With these features, your space can be distinct and personal —with your vision, your branding, your rules—while still living inside a platform where people are already spending their time. At Substack, creators can carve out their own corners of the internet without sacrificing the network effects that make platforms powerful.

The old choice was between independence and scale. Now you can have both.

We’ve turned off comments for this post. As always, feel free to share your perspective in a Note, in a post, or by restacking.

And lately, many platforms suppress any links that take audiences off their own surfaces (and thus away from the ads they run on them). Incidentally, Substack doesn’t suppress off-platform links.

As we never tire of mentioning, network effects and the app account for the majority of paid subscriptions.

Today we’re launching the Substack TV app for Apple TV and Google TV

Substack is the home for the best longform—work creators put real care into and subscribers choose to spend time with. Now these thought-provoking videos and livestreams have a natural home on the TV, where subscribers can settle in for the extended viewing that great video deserves.

That might mean watching Dolly Parton reflect on her showbiz journey, George Saunders read from his book, or Tina Brown interview leading figures in news and culture. Chris Cillizza, the author of So What and a frequent on-air contributor, put it simply: “Video doesn’t have to live in any one place. It needs to be wherever someone chooses to consume it. The Substack TV app does just that for me and my work.”

What you can do with the TV app today

Creators who already publish video don’t need to do anything new—your videos will automatically be available for subscribers who are signed in to the TV app.

This initial version of the TV app is focused on reliable, high-quality viewing, and we’ll be adding more features over time. We’re starting with the essentials and will keep improving it based on how people actually use it.

At launch, subscribers can:

• Watch video posts and livestreams from the creators and publications they’re subscribed to
• Browse a “For You” row that highlights videos from their subscriptions, plus recommended videos
• Open a dedicated page for each subscription to explore more videos from a specific publication

Both free and paid subscribers can sign in to the TV app and begin using it today, with viewing access matched to their current subscription level. While paid content previews for free subscribers aren’t supported yet, we plan to add them in a future update.

“I’m excited to report the Substack revolution will be televised,” said veteran journalist and former CNN anchor Jim Acosta, who uses Substack’s live video feature to host a daily news show. “This is a game-changing moment for the rise of independent media. Substack has proven that legacy media consumers are not only searching for fresh alternatives; they are finding them.”

How to watch Substack videos on your TV

• Search for “Substack” in your TV’s app store and download the app (Apple App Store for Apple TV, or the Apps section for Google and Android TV devices).
• Open the app on your TV.
• A QR code will appear on the screen. Scan it with your phone or enter the URL manually to log in.
• That’s it—you’re signed in and ready to start watching videos from the creators you subscribe to.

To check which system your TV is running on, go to System or Specifications in your TV’s settings.

Learn more about setting up the TV app in our Help Center

What’s coming next

Because this is an early version, some familiar Substack features aren’t available yet. We’ll expand what the TV app can do over time, including:

• Audio posts and read-alouds
• Search and improved discovery
• Previews of paid content for free subscribers
• In-app upgrades to paid subscriptions
• Sections for different shows from one publication

Don’t forget to let your subscribers know you’re on Substack TV, and let us know what would make the experience even better.

Leave a comment

Since live video rolled out on Substack in January, we’ve been building toward a simple idea: creators show up with something to say, and the platform handles the rest. What starts as a live conversation becomes durable media—recordings and clips—that can travel, be discovered, and earn, long after the stream ends.

Over the past year, writers and creators have used live video to report on news as it unfolded, host recurring shows, perform songs live, and talk directly with their communities. Along the way, we’ve worked on improvements to make live video easier to use, more flexible, and better aligned with how publishers actually work.

Below is a look at what’s new, along with a survey of how live video has evolved over the past year and the creative ways people are using it.

How live video has evolved

As creators experimented with live video in different ways, we paid close attention to what worked, what didn’t, and what they asked for next. That feedback has guided how live video has evolved on Substack over the past year.

Today, we’re taking the latest step forward by introducing auto-generated thumbnails for live video recordings. These create a polished cover image that viewers see before they press play—across your publication, in email, and on platforms like YouTube. Below is an example from a live conversation between Michael Simmons, Claudia Faith, and Joel Salinas.

Learn more about auto thumbnails in the Help Center

This builds on a series of improvements we’ve shipped throughout the year, all shaped directly by creator feedback:

• Scheduling: Plan live videos in advance with an auto-generated calendar link for audiences and easy-to-share promotional assets.
• Audio-only mode: Go live without video, for those who prefer not to be on camera.
• Music mode: Perform live with higher-quality audio, designed specifically for musicians and musical performances.
• Desktop streaming: Go live directly from your computer, giving people more flexibility and control over their setup.
• Enhanced clips: Automatically turn live moments into dynamic, shareable clips that extend the life of a conversation beyond the stream.
• Auto-publishing clips: Automatically share clips from your live video to YouTube and LinkedIn, making it easy for conversations to reach new audiences.

Looking ahead, we’ll continue building more ways for publishers to create compelling video and supporting materials, without needing extra tools or technical expertise. We’ll have more to share in the new year, and we’re excited to keep building alongside you.

A year of live video on Substack

In 2025, writers, analysts, artists, chefs, and musicians used live video to share insights, respond to events in real time, and connect with audiences in ways that felt immediate and personal.

At the start of the year, live video became a way to make sense of economic uncertainty. Newcomer’s Eric Newcomer joined Sequoia Capital partner Andrew Reed to discuss how rapid advances in AI models are reshaping private tech startups, why more companies are choosing to stay private longer, and the rise of venture capital megafunds.

Live video also created space for creativity and craft. Food creators Clare de Boer and Dorie Greenspan used Substack live to talk about taste, offering viewers a unique look at how different creative disciplines approach food storytelling.

For musicians, live video became a way to bring fans closer than ever. Patti Smith and longtime collaborator Lenny Kaye went live from her home for an intimate performance and conversation.

Lia Haberman of ICYMI by Lia Haberman and Natalie Jarvey of Like & Subscribe from Natalie Jarvey shared their own perspectives on media and internet culture.

In another standout discussion, i-D’s editor in chief Thom Bettridge went live with his team to host a magazine pitch meeting, giving audiences a rare look inside the editorial process.

And tomorrow, Thursday, December 18 at 1:30 p.m. PT/4:30 p.m. ET, comedians Paul Scheer and W. Kamau Bell will go live on Substack to humorously unpack what they’re leaving behind in 2025.

If you’ve been thinking about going live, now’s a great time. Go live from desktop or mobile to reflect on the year, share what you’ve learned, and what you’re thinking about as we head into the new year. Tag Substack Team, and we may feature it in the Substack feed.

Substack is building video infrastructure so that creators don’t need to be editors or videographers. Your job is to create—the rest should feel effortless. You bring your perspective, and Substack turns it into durable media that can travel across the internet.
Today, we’re taking another step toward that vision with desktop live video and enhanced clips. These updates give you more flexibility in how you go live and produce sharper, more engaging highlights automatically.
Whether you’re interviewing a peer, telling a personal story, or responding to breaking news, Substack now makes it easier to capture the moments that matter and share them far beyond your publication.
Here’s what’s new.

Here’s what’s new.

Desktop live video

If you’ve gone live from the Substack app before, desktop streaming will feel familiar. You can start a live video the same way you start any post—just click “Create,” and you’ll now see a live video option. Add a title, choose who you’re broadcasting to, and enter a preview room where you can check your setup and talk with any co-hosts before going live.
You can go live on desktop even if your co-hosts are on mobile. Scheduling livestreams on desktop is coming soon.
Learn more about desktop streaming in our Help Center.

Clips are a growth engine

Clips are becoming a meaningful part of how creators share their work and reach new subscribers. As more creators experiment with them, we’re seeing clear signs of momentum.
Here’s what the data shows:

• Nearly 50% of all livestream hosts now share or download a clip the same day they go live, taking advantage of clips as a strategic promotional tool.
• Since clips rolled out earlier this year, they have directly generated nearly 500,000 free subscriptions across the Substack ecosystem.
• Substack-generated clips on external platforms now receive more than 500,000 views every day, thanks to auto-publishing integrations with YouTube and LinkedIn.
  Learn more about auto-uploading to YouTube and LinkedIn in the Help Center.
  We’ve made improvements to clips to make them even more engaging and easier to share.
• Dynamic editing highlights the active speaker, trims dead air, and adds subtle zooms to make conversations feel sharper.
• Clean title cards give every clip a polished opening that captures attention across platforms.
• Instant availability means ready-to-share clips appear the moment your livestream ends.
• One-tap sharing and downloads make it simple to post clips to Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube Shorts, LinkedIn, or any other network where you connect with your audience.

How creators are using clips to grow

Creators on Substack use clips to capture the moments that resonate with their audience, whether it’s an unscripted insight, an unexpected emotion, or a funny exchange. Substack’s tools make it easy to turn those moments into something you can share anywhere, without needing an expensive setup or technical skills.
Below are a few examples that show the range of what clips can make possible.

• Esther Perel and Dan Harris had a thoughtful conversation about the small, practical actions anyone can take to combat loneliness.
• David Lebovitz and Leslie Brenner mused about the unique, and often comically stressful, experience of grocery shopping in Paris.
• Brooke Baldwin shared an emotional reflection about a difficult relationship with her brother. Her honesty connected deeply with viewers and spread quickly across the network.
• Anushka Joshi sat down with Ochuko Akpovbovbo to talk about AI’s impact on dating.
  Many of these clips drove new subscriptions. But more importantly, they show how a compelling moment can introduce your work to people who might never have found you otherwise.

Try it out

Go live today, from desktop or mobile, and share your best moments across your networks. Tag @SubstackTeam, and your clip could be featured this month on our Notes account.

What this means for you and subscribers in the UK and Australia:

• Your connection with your subscribers won’t change, and the way you publish content for your audience remains the same. Your email list, publishing process, and relationship with your subscribers are not affected.
• If content is labeled under one of the categories covered by the law, anyone viewing it on the web or in the Substack app may see a notice requiring them to complete age verification before viewing it.
• Paid subscribers are already verified. Anyone with a credit card on file does not need to take extra steps.
• Many subscribers may already be verified through other platforms. Because age verification is now required across online services in these countries, some people will have completed the process and will not need to do it again on Substack.

Here is how we’re handling this:

• We aim to keep the experience on Substack as smooth as possible while preserving as much expressive freedom as the law allows.
• When a law requires us to restrict content or request documentation to access certain material, we will do so only in the countries that require it, and we will make the process and the reasoning as transparent as possible.
• We will continue refining our labeling system, and we welcome your feedback. More information on content labeling is available on our support page.

We’ll continue to share updates as these rules evolve. Thank you for everything you do to help make Substack the home for great culture.

Addendum:

As of December 10, 2025, the Online Safety Act has required Substack to introduce age verification for users in Australia. View more information on Substack’s Australia-specific content policy here.