Dead Or Alive

Once again, it was Hack Day at Tumblr, our favorite excuse to pause the roadmap for a moment and build something weird, useful, or ideally both. Here is a sneak peek of what the team built.

Unified Inbox

@ex, @kostastsi4 and @alexjf worked on making Asks and Submissions easier to find in the apps, moving your Inbox (currently buried in blog settings) to a tab in the Activity screen, where all your other incoming communication lives.

Gifs in replies

In @elt’s opinion, replies could use some spicing up. So he spent Hack Day adding GIF support to replies. Neat! 

Fun fact: reply threads themselves actually started as a Hack Day project over two years ago. The circle of hack life continues. 

Scaling the Reblog Graph Explorer

@blowery improved the implementation of reblog graph to handle massive viral posts gracefully. Instead of struggling with very large reblog chains, this hack rethinks how the graph is laid out so it can handle posts with massive numbers of reblogs more smoothly, making it easier to explore how posts spread across Tumblr.

In-Blog Search Filters

Web had the most complete set of in-blog search filters. Android and iOS? Not so much. @lesianlen worked on bringing parity across all three platforms: Android got Top/Recent sorting, an original posts filter, and Ask and Chat post type filters. iOS went from zero filters to a brand-new bottom sheet with the full filter set. Now everyone gets to search their blog properly, regardless of platform. 

Separating in-blog search from "Exclude from Tumblr Search and Recommendations"

Did you know that selecting the “Exclude from Tumblr search and recommendations” setting would also disable your in-blog search? Well, thanks to @lesianlen, now it doesn’t. This one’s already live.

Communities: Granular Moderator Permissions and Promotion Flow 

Promoting a member to admin in a Community is a big deal (and currently irreversible). 

@straku ironed out the promotion flow, adding a simple step to alert, confirm, and prevent promotions that could be to moderation.

Another request is having more control over what moderators can do. A way to give moderators more power, without them overtaking the community admin.

@jubs built a permissions system that lets admins choose what their moderators can do, without compromising their own ownership. In addition to existing moderator permissions, such as removing posts, and comments, you'd be able to allow mods to edit the community appearance (title, description, etc), the community settings (auto-moderation, tags, etc), and even manage other moderators.

Memories in Profile Page & Archive Page

Inspired by Google Photos’ “Memories” feature, Sowmia proposed building a “Memories” experience for the blog to surface nostalgic posts from its history.

The idea was to create a dedicated Memories feature and link it to archive pages, enabling users to rediscover past content in a more engaging way. As part of the hackday, she implemented the archive page portion of this idea, laying the foundation for integrating the full Memories experience in the future.

Post launcher with shortcuts to Drafts and Queue

@ex tried a new version of the post launcher at the top of the dashboard on web: switch blogs before opening the editor, or jump straight to your Drafts or Queue (takes 3-4 clicks to get there now). The buttons also show how many posts you have in your Drafts and Queue.

Reblogs with Videos

After all, why not? Why shouldn’t we have videos in reblogs? @andriibuilds dared to ask. And build it.

Like Sorting

People with thousands of Tumblr likes have been asking for the ability to sort and organize them for years. To start, @andriibuilds prototyped sorting options for the Likes page.

RemindMe

Inspired by Reddit's RemindMe bot, @data-science-from-the-trenches built a native reminder system: reply to any post or thread with "RemindMe! 2 days" and you'll get an activity notification linking back to it when that time has passed.

The Mysterious Cat Asks

As a preparation for April Fools, @jubs introduced asks sent by the Mysterious Cat, when you eat an "ask" food in the Snek game. Each question was represented by an item, with its own rarity.

And that’s a wrap on Tumblr Hack Day, March 2026 Edition. Huge shout-out to everyone who spent this time building cool things, sharing demos, and reminding us how much fun it is to make Tumblr weirder, better, and more delightful. 

Keep an eye on @changes to see if any of these hacks make it out to you.

Once again, it was Hack Day at Tumblr, our favorite excuse to pause the roadmap for a moment and build something weird, useful, or ideally both. Here is a sneak peek of what the team built.

Unified Inbox

@ex, @kostastsi4 and @alexjf worked on making Asks and Submissions easier to find in the apps, moving your Inbox (currently buried in blog settings) to a tab in the Activity screen, where all your other incoming communication lives.

Gifs in replies

In @elt’s opinion, replies could use some spicing up. So he spent Hack Day adding GIF support to replies. Neat! 

Fun fact: reply threads themselves actually started as a Hack Day project over two years ago. The circle of hack life continues. 

Scaling the Reblog Graph Explorer

@blowery improved the implementation of reblog graph to handle massive viral posts gracefully. Instead of struggling with very large reblog chains, this hack rethinks how the graph is laid out so it can handle posts with massive numbers of reblogs more smoothly, making it easier to explore how posts spread across Tumblr.

In-Blog Search Filters

Web had the most complete set of in-blog search filters. Android and iOS? Not so much. @lesianlen worked on bringing parity across all three platforms: Android got Top/Recent sorting, an original posts filter, and Ask and Chat post type filters. iOS went from zero filters to a brand-new bottom sheet with the full filter set. Now everyone gets to search their blog properly, regardless of platform. 

Separating in-blog search from "Exclude from Tumblr Search and Recommendations"

Did you know that selecting the “Exclude from Tumblr search and recommendations” setting would also disable your in-blog search? Well, thanks to @lesianlen, now it doesn’t. This one’s already live.

Communities: Granular Moderator Permissions and Promotion Flow 

Promoting a member to admin in a Community is a big deal (and currently irreversible). 

@straku ironed out the promotion flow, adding a simple step to alert, confirm, and prevent promotions that could be to moderation.

Another request is having more control over what moderators can do. A way to give moderators more power, without them overtaking the community admin.

@jubs built a permissions system that lets admins choose what their moderators can do, without compromising their own ownership. In addition to existing moderator permissions, such as removing posts, and comments, you'd be able to allow mods to edit the community appearance (title, description, etc), the community settings (auto-moderation, tags, etc), and even manage other moderators.

Memories in Profile Page & Archive Page

Inspired by Google Photos’ “Memories” feature, Sowmia proposed building a “Memories” experience for the blog to surface nostalgic posts from its history.

The idea was to create a dedicated Memories feature and link it to archive pages, enabling users to rediscover past content in a more engaging way. As part of the hackday, she implemented the archive page portion of this idea, laying the foundation for integrating the full Memories experience in the future.

Post launcher with shortcuts to Drafts and Queue

@ex tried a new version of the post launcher at the top of the dashboard on web: switch blogs before opening the editor, or jump straight to your Drafts or Queue (takes 3-4 clicks to get there now). The buttons also show how many posts you have in your Drafts and Queue.

Reblogs with Videos

After all, why not? Why shouldn’t we have videos in reblogs? @andriibuilds dared to ask. And build it.

Like Sorting

People with thousands of Tumblr likes have been asking for the ability to sort and organize them for years. To start, @andriibuilds prototyped sorting options for the Likes page.

RemindMe

Inspired by Reddit's RemindMe bot, @data-science-from-the-trenches built a native reminder system: reply to any post or thread with "RemindMe! 2 days" and you'll get an activity notification linking back to it when that time has passed.

The Mysterious Cat Asks

As a preparation for April Fools, @jubs introduced asks sent by the Mysterious Cat, when you eat an "ask" food in the Snek game. Each question was represented by an item, with its own rarity.

And that’s a wrap on Tumblr Hack Day, March 2026 Edition. Huge shout-out to everyone who spent this time building cool things, sharing demos, and reminding us how much fun it is to make Tumblr weirder, better, and more delightful. 

Keep an eye on @changes to see if any of these hacks make it out to you.

Hack days are when our team gets to step away from the regular roadmap and work on whatever ideas they so desire. Here's a taste of what came out of it:

Advanced Search

We added advanced search operators in a previous Hack Day. This time, @lesianlen added an exclusion operator to exclude posts that contain a specific word, phrase, or tag. @ex and @blowery helped out to add a spiffy modal that shows exactly how you can use all available advanced search operators.

Search in Communities

Speaking of search, @lesianlen also worked on adding search within individual Communities to find posts and conversations.

"Latest Comments" Community feed

@jubs and @lesianlen worked on creating a tab within individual communities that bumps a post to the top when someone adds a comment. Easily find posts where conversation is hot!

Nudge to Add Moderators

When your community is growing, you need more people to help run it. @jubs worked on a reminder that suggests just that. 

iOS Home Screen Widgets 

Ben worked on widgets with quick actions and Radar, making Tumblr even more accessible on your home screen.

iOS Shortcuts and Siri Support

@kostastsi4 explored making Tumblr play more nicely with your iPhone: showing quick links in Spotlight to jump straight to your Dashboard, Messages, Activity, or your blog. He also began adding support for Siri and Shortcuts to open specific tabs, start a new post, or search for exactly what you want.

Suggest Tags Based on Post Content

Tumblr runs on tags. However, picking the right tags for your post can be difficult unless you're a Tumblr expert. Our current tag suggestions are a combination of tags you follow, tags you've used before, and some trending tags. @arandomblog31 worked on suggesting better tags based on the post you're writing.

Reblog Explorer

Ever wondered how a post spread across Tumblr? @blowery built a full-screen version of the reblog graph view that lets you explore how a post traveled. Click through the graph to see the full reblog trail update in real-time explore different branches. There's even keyboard navigation — press the up arrow repeatedly to follow the most popular reblog path through the entire graph, or walk backwards toward the original post to see what tags people added along the way.

Identities 

@elt began exploring what it would take to eliminate the limitations of secondary blogs.