Creative

Reblogs, likes, replies, @mentions—these interactions already show up on your desktop activity screen. You knew that. What you might not already know is that you can now filter different activity types on mobile.

Hey there! 

Real quick: We made a couple of tiny tweaks to streamline posting in our mobile apps.

The first position in your mini media picker is now your catch-all camera button to add a brand new photo, video, or GIF. Speaking of GIFs,  create your own GIF using any video in your camera roll by tapping “GIF.” Select up to three seconds from your video, speed it up, slow it down, or play it in reverse.  A little less clutter, a lot more functionality.

Once you’re ready to publish, tap that “Post” button (well, duh) or long-press it to unleash a colorful cascade of options to queue, schedule, save as a draft, or post privately like it’s a special little secret only for you and you alone. 

Have a post you’re particularly proud of? Something that you want to make sure everyone sees as soon as they visit your Tumblr? Then you’re gonna love this:

Pinned posts are here! Whether you’re on desktop or mobile, this little tool will pin the post of your choosing to the top of your Tumblr. Your dashboard will remain unaffected. Just tap the meatballs menu (●●●) on the upper right-hand corner of your post, slam your finger down on “Pin,” and you’re in business, baby. The business of pinning posts. 

Get your swiping fingers ready

There’s a brand new way to post pictures, videos, and Loops you make with the Tumblr camera. We made some tweaks to the existing camera features and even added a few new creative tools. The best part? It’s easier than ever to get there. All you have to do is swipe right on your dashboard while you’re in the app. We’ve conferred with the leading experts in science, math, and fingers and they all agreed this makes it 1250% times faster to get to the camera. Nearly unbelievable.

Upon swiping right, you’ll see a familiar button at the top of your screen that says “Normal.” There are three different modes to nab your content, and you can switch between them by tapping that button. “Normal” takes pictures and videos, “Stitch” allows you to take and string together a series of pictures or videos in one video file, and “Loop” creates a moving image that plays backward and forward in a, well, you know…a loop.

Some of the fun stuff that already existed just got a little facelift, some of it is brand new, and all of it is in your app right now (as long as you’re running version 15.4 or later of the Tumblr app).

What’s new?

Editing from your camera roll! Up until now, you could only use our newer filters on pictures and videos you took in the app. Now you can throw those puppies on photos and videos you’ve already saved to your phone.

You can draw! Tap that squiggle at the bottom of the screen after you take your picture, video, or Loop and find a whole new set of drawing tools. Tap the color wheel to open the color bar and choose your desired hue. You can get real nitty-gritty with how concentrated you want the color to be by pressing and holding on the color bar to bring up more detailed options. There’s an eraser tool, three different types of tips, and tapping that little dot all the way on the bottom left side of your screen reveals the ability to change the width of your lines.

What’s better?

Filters! Up until yesterday, you could only use one filter at a time. Now you can layer two on top of each other. Big change? Nah. Just better.

Ghost overlay! When you’re in Stitch mode and you want to line up consecutive shots for a seamless transition, just tap the ghost overlay icon for a ghostly frame to pop up in your camera’s view. The icon will be on the left side of your screen and kinda looks like a sandwich with a transparent piece of bread on top.

Adding text! The fonts are updated to match the fonts you can use in posts and you can add background colors to make them easier to read.

Stickers! Some stickers that were hardly used are gone, but all of the favorites remain. (We could never get rid of thicc corgi.) We added a few new ones, too. Just tap that smiley face pal at the bottom of your graphic.

Oh, no. Oh, dear. We have awful news. We accidentally added group chats to Tumblr.

Group chats are a place for you to connect with other people on Tumblr to discuss things that are important to you—like long Furby, or your favorite fandom.

It’s terribly upsetting, but this is going to make it even easier to connect with like-minded people and find new communities you might not know existed.

We have no idea how this came to be

Each group chat can hold up to 100 members. To make matters worse, you can create and join as many group chats as your beating heart desires.

The only good news we can give at this time

Group chats must be a friendly and welcoming space for everyone. When you create a group chat, you become the sole owner and are responsible for how it is run. You alone can invite new members and accept or deny incoming requests to join. Just remember: group chats are publicly viewable, and while only members may participate, anyone on Tumblr can see its contents.

As the owner of a group chat, you possess the power to remove any member or message you feel needs to be removed. However, you do not need to be the owner or even a member to report a violation of our hate speech policy or other aspects of our Community Guidelines. Reports will be properly dealt with by our Trust & Safety team.

Phew

We hesitate to tell you this, but to learn more about how to use group chats, head on over to our Help Center. It’s full of tips, tricks, and helpful information. Disgusting. We’re so sorry.

You’ve been warned. We can’t protect you from the truth any longer.

Good news: You can now add alt text to every photo and GIF you upload to a post with your Tumblr iOS or Android app.

What?

Alt text! It’s a textual alternative to a photo or GIF, so anyone who uses a screen reader will know what you’ve posted. If you post, say, a long Furby sitting on a couch, you might provide alt text that says “a long Furby sitting on a couch” so anyone who needs to use a screen reader gets to join in on the fun. Keep it short, keep it descriptive. 

How?

Easy-peasy. When you add an image or GIF to a post or reblog on Tumblr in the iOS or Android app, you’ll see a meatballs menu (●●●) pop up in the lower right-hand corner of your image or GIF. Tap it, then select “Add alt text.” 

Why?

We’re continuing our efforts to make Tumblr more accessible in accordance with the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium. They’re an initiative that sets standards for accessibility for people who may need assistance using the internet.

There’s a big change coming to your Tumblr experience…but only if you want it.

We’re introducing the Color Palette! It’s giving you the power to control the color of your dashboard (and the rest of our blue space) in your iOS and Android apps and on mobile web.

You can currently choose from three options:

True Blue, our default color scheme.

Dark Mode, for when you want to turn down the lights.

Low-Contrast Classic, our new low-contrast color scheme, complete with an old familiar blue so many of you love.

To check it out, just go to your settings in the app by tapping the silhouette icon, visiting “General settings,” and selecting “Color Palette.” 

Have you ever wanted to double your dog?

How about double your doubled dogs?

Good news! You can do just that, and so much more, with the new camera filters in your Tumblr app.

You now have rainbow filters, a glitch filter, and a neat building blocks filter, filters with mirror effects, and a few more. There’s a dozen waiting to be used on your photos, GIFs, and videos now.

To access these filters, simply:

Open up the Tumblr app (make sure you’ve updated to version 13.1 or later).

Tap the pencil at the bottom of your screen to open the post flower.

Select the GIF, photo, or video post type.

Tap the camera at the top of your screen.

See that disco ball? Tap it with care and open the door to your 12 new best filter friends.

Enjoy! 

Some time ago we took a long, hard look at how we stacked up to the recommendations outlined in the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium. This is the initiative that sets standards for accessibility for people who may need assistance using the internet. It outlines steps to take and tools to use to create as seamless of an experience online as possible, whether you have auditory, visual, or neurological disabilities, are using a limited device, are on a slow connection with limited bandwidth, or…well, a whole bunch of other reasons.

The result of that long, hard look? Not great. We needed to make sure Tumblr was accessible to anyone who wants to use it.

Over the past few weeks we’ve been making changes to do just that. Our inaccessible menus are more accessible, we fixed our poorly described elements, and increased overall readability. You can read more about all that in our most recent @javascript post about the mobile web.

Part of making Tumblr more accessible involved upping the color contrast in our UI, most notably on the dashboard and everywhere else that familiar blue touches. The light grays and muted blues had a contrast ratio of 2.02:1. What does that mean? Bad. It was bad, and we needed to do better by people with visual impairments.

Enter your new dashboard:

It looks…cleaner, doesn’t it? Like someone dusted off the poorly accessible bits. The blue is darker, the grays are lighter, all the buttons and icons are brighter with our new brand colors, and it has a contrast ratio of 7.87:1 What does that mean? Good! Very good.

The switch to your brand new, higher contrast, less dusty dashboard has been slowly rolling out this week. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’ll get it sometime in the next few days.

A note: We know that this color change on the dashboard negatively impacts the beautiful bluespace art so many of you have created over the past few years. Seeing these older posts lose the utilization of the dashboard—something that made them so special and unique to just Tumblr—is certainly not a great feeling. There’s no way around that. We hope, however, that this change only means newer, more bluespace art will be created, and that this time around it will be easier for everyone to experience.