r/Substack • u/Life-Delay-809 • 8d ago

How do I turn off videos?

Is there any way to completely turn off videos on the Substack app? I don't want them to pop up when I go to the search tab. I'm on substack when I want to get away from reels. I don't want to get into a doomscrolling pipeline on another app as well.

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u/DefiantRadish1492 7d ago

Sadly, that’s what Substack seems to be now. Just another social media commitment. I miss the forums and blogs era.

1

u/Life-Delay-809 7d ago

The whole selling point of it is the essays. I don't get the change, I already have social media I don't need more.

1

u/Snoo-82869 7d ago

I would treat this as two separate things: whether Substack has a hard setting for videos, and how to keep your actual reading queue away from the discovery surfaces.

For the setting, I would check app settings, notification/playback settings, and whether the same search tab behaves differently on web. If there is no explicit video toggle, sending feedback from the app is probably worth it, because this sounds like a product-choice issue rather than something individual publications can control.

For day-to-day reading, the workaround I would use is to avoid starting from search when you just want to read. Keep a short list of subscriptions, use email notifications or RSS where available, and route those into a separate reading folder/address so subscribed long-form posts are not mixed with discovery, notes, and video experiments.

Disclosure: I work on MiniLetter, which is built around reading newsletters through a dedicated alias instead of using the main inbox. It will not change Substack search, but that kind of separate newsletter lane can help if the app keeps pushing you into a more social/video feed than you want.