X Is Changing How It Displays Articles

If you use the X app on iPhone, there’s a good chance any links you open today will look different than they did yesterday. That’s because the platform is trying to up engagement on posts with links in them, by keeping the like, comment, repost, favorite, and share buttons active in a new footer even when you click through to an outside article.

When you click on a link in X, it doesn’t actually navigate away from the app, but instead uses a special version of either Chrome (on Android) or Safari (on iPhone) to open the article within X. That hasn’t changed. But what has is that, on iPhone, you’ll now continue to see interactable elements at the bottom of the page, with buttons you can press to engage directly with X while reading. Also, when you first access a link or scroll up, you’ll even see part of the original social media post that drove you there above those buttons. These elements will remain even if you click another link in the article you’re reading.

It’s a small change despite maybe looking a little busy, but it points to a potential fix for a major problem. According to X head of product Nikita Bier, the idea is to try to increase traffic for posts with links in them, by making it easier for users to engage with them even after clicking through.

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A lot of controversy has been made about X posts that include links getting less traffic than those that don’t, especially after the platform was acquired by current owner Elon Musk. While the site hasn’t admitted to it directly, SEO experts have recently started warning users to avoid putting links in their traffic, claiming that X now deprioritizes posts with links on them, as they keep people away from their timelines. Musk has also made comments that some have accused of implying this to be the case.

Bier, however, refuted this while debuting the new interface for opening links on iOS, instead saying “links are not deboosted,” and implying that the lack of interactable timeline elements on them simply leads to less engagement naturally, something the new change is trying to fix.

For instance, the old method of opening links could potentially draw you away from the site and interrupt any intention you had to reply to the original social media post or share it to your own audience. Bier said this is what led to posts getting lower reach, and that the new footer should help them “get better signal.”

But at the same time, it’s clear that the new approach has benefits for X as well, since it gives users easier avenues to navigate away from external articles and back to their timelines, where they can drive engagement on other posts and see ads.

But regardless of whether X manually deprioritizes posts with links, or if the motivations for the change are selfish, the fact that changes like this are even being made means the platform might finally start trying to make linking in posts more viable. That could be a huge boon for users like myself, who have historically used X (and Twitter before it) to help drive traffic to our posts. Whatever the reason this stopped working, it would be helpful for those who rely on it if it were fixed.

That said, there’s a chance you might not be seeing the new interface at all, or that if you are, you might not like it. Luckily, if that sounds like you, you’re not out of options.

X Links only look different on iPhone, for now

In the post announcing the change, Bier mentioned that the “new link experience” is only in testing, and that it’s only on iOS at the moment. That means that, while I do currently see it on posts I’m opening with my iPhone 15 Pro, you might not. On my Pixel 10, I’m still getting the old interface, and even on iPhone, it doesn’t seem to be affecting all users. My husband, for instance, is not seeing the footer on his iPhone 17 Pro. 

That’s great news if you don’t like the look of the new footer, although if you would like to try it out, I unfortunately don’t have much advice at the moment. It seems only some users have access to it right now.

However, if you are seeing the new footer but you would prefer not to, there are two steps you can take to get rid of it.

How to open X links without the new footer

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

The change to how X links work is server-side, so downgrading your app or avoiding an update won’t save you here. Instead, to get rid of the footer from links you open in X, you’ll need to first open the link, then hit the three-dots button just above the footer on the right-hand side.

From there, you’ve got two options. First, to open the page with its formatting intact but no footer, tap “Open in browser.” This will open the link in your default browser, but also take you to that browser’s app instead, meaning you’ll have to find your way back to the X app if you want to keep scrolling once you’re done reading.

To stay in the X app, you can take advantage of Safari’s reader mode, which will still be available to you even if Chrome or another app is your default browser. In the same three-dot menu, simply tap “Show Reader” instead, and you’ll see a plain version of the link with all website formatting stripped out, including the X app’s new footer, all without having to move to a new app. To return to the normal view, just tap the X button in the top left corner. Then, to go back to your X timeline, either grab the footer and scroll up, or tap the X button just above the footer on the left-hand side.

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