Writing Posts (2024)

When you create a post on Tumblr, the latest iteration of our editor (sometimes referred to as NPF, short for Neue Post Format) enables you to add multiple types of content into a single post. Every post made from the Tumblr iOS or Android apps uses this format.

In the Apps

Upon opening the post editor, you’ll see a row of icons along the bottom of the screen.

From left to right:

• Aa: Your text formatting options, for text blocks.
• Chain icon: Tap this to add a link block.
• GIF: Allows you to create a GIF using a video from your device or use Tumblr’s GIF search. Inserts an image block.
• Photo album icon: Opens your device’s image library. You can insert an image block or a video block.
• Headphones: Search for a track on Soundcloud or Spotify and insert it in your post using an audio block.
• Polls: Tap this to add a poll.
• Read More: Tap this to split your post with a “Keep reading” link.
• Two People: Tap this to add a Content Label.

Note: When you’ve got some text highlighted, you’ll just see the Aa icon and the text formatting options. Deselect text to reveal the block type icons.

Each icon corresponds to a different type of content block that you can add to the post. We’ll go through each type of block below.

Text Options

Type some text in a post, then highlight it to bring up your text formatting options.

Here you’ll find the following options:

• Colors are found in the first row. Tap a color to apply it to the selected text.
• Press and hold the Aa icon to change the text subtype:
  • Regular: The default text size.
  • Bigger: A medium font size.
  • Biggest: A big font size. This option can be used to create the post title.
  • Quote: Corresponds to the quote post type.
  • Chat: Corresponds to the chat post type.
  • Lucille: Cursive font.
  • Indented: Blockquote.
  • Bulleted list: An unordered list using bullet points.
  • Numbered list: An ordered list.
• You can also tap the Aa icon to cycle through these subtypes.
• To the right of the Aa icon, you’ll find a few more options. From left to right:
  • Bold (B)
  • Italic (i)
  • Strikethrough (S)
  • Small (<s>)
  • Hyperlink
    • Tap this icon, then paste your URL to add a link to your text.

You can learn more about your text formatting options in this help article.

Adding a Link

Tap the chain icon to insert a link block. Tip: If you already have your URL copied to your clipboard, Tumblr will ask you if you’d like to use that link.

Inserting a GIF

Tap the GIF icon to bring up GIF search. Tap the magnifying glass to search for a GIF, or create your own by tapping “Create a GIF.”

You can learn more about creating GIFs in this article.

Adding a Photo or Video

Tap the photo icon to open your device’s image library.

After adding an image to your post, tap the 3 dots in the lower right corner to add alt text. The alt text should be a brief description of your image, as if you were describing it to someone over the phone, to make your post accessible to folks using a screen reader.

Tap the palette icon to edit your image with filters, stickers, and text.

You can also paste in a link from YouTube, Vimeo, and Dailymotion to embed the video directly into any post.

You can learn more about how to take and edit photos over in this help article. Our article about posting videos is here.

Audio

Tap the headphones icon to search Spotify and Soundcloud for a track.

You can learn more about posting audio in this article.

Rearranging Content Blocks

You can press and drag a block to a different spot within your post.

You can also delete a whole block by dragging and dropping it into the trashcan icon.

On Web

In a browser, the post editor uses the same content block types as its mobile counterpart but will look slightly different depending on which post type icon you click. We’ll go over the available options below.

HTML or Markdown

The post editor uses rich text editing by default, but you can switch to HTML or Markdown mode if you’d like. With the post form open, click the gear wheel icon in the top right corner. At the bottom of that menu you’ll see your text editor options. Please note that any advanced custom HTML aside from styling options already included in the post editor will be removed when saving your post.

Text Posts

Click the Aa/text post option and you’ll see a familiar post editor.

The icons on the right side of the post are as follows, from left to right:

• Camera: Upload an image.
• Video: Upload a video.
• GIF: Opens GIF search.
• Audio: Search for a track on Spotify or Soundcloud, or paste a URL from Spotify, Soundcloud, or Bandcamp. We’re working to add support for audio file uploads.
• Link: Insert a link block.
• Three dots: Insert a read-more link.

Type some text, then highlight it to bring up the text formatting options.

From left to right, the options are:

• Text subtype options. Click to expand the dropdown menu:
  • Regular: The default text size.
  • Bigger: A medium font size.
  • Biggest: A big font size. This option can be used to create the post title.
  • Quote: Corresponds to the quote post type.
  • Chat: Corresponds to the chat post type.
  • Lucille: Cursive font.
  • Indented: Blockquote.
  • Bulleted list: An unordered list using bullet points.
  • Numbered list: An ordered list.
• Strikethrough (S)
• Small (<s>)
• Bold (B)
• Italic (i)
• Hyperlink
• Font colors

Learn more about your text formatting options here.

Photo Posts

Click the photo post icon to open the photo editor.

You can upload images from your device or add images by pasting a URL.

When entering a caption below your image, you will see all of the options we covered in the text posts section. You can add any content block type to the caption.

You can learn more about adding photos to your posts in this article.

Quote Posts

Clicking the quote post icon will open a text post with the text subtype set to quote.

Link Posts

Click the link post icon to open a new post with a link block already inserted. You can then paste or type the URL you’d like to use in your post.

Chat Posts

Clicking the chat post icon will open a text post with the text subtype set to chat.

Type some text, then type a colon and it’ll automatically be formatted as bold. For example:

kat: neat post, frank.

frank: well thank you very much.

Audio Posts

Click the audio post icon to open a post form with a pre-inserted audio block. You can search for a track on Spotify or Soundcloud, or paste an audio URL from Spotify, Soundcloud, or Bandcamp.

Learn more about audio options in our official Help Center article.

Video Posts

Click the video post icon to open a post form with the following two options.

Click the option on the left to upload a video file from your device. Click the option on the right to use a video URL.

Click the little question mark to see how many minutes of video you have left today before hitting the limit.

You can learn more about posting video in this help article.

Limitations

The new editor has some limits to be aware of for different content types:

• A single text block can contain a maximum of 4,096 characters. If you paste or write a single paragraph that exceeds this limit, it will be broken up into two (or more) text blocks.
  • Once your post has been created, each individual paragraph is converted to a text block.
• The maximum number of mentions is 50. This is to prevent spam and abuse.
• The maximum number of inline links is 100. The maximum number of link blocks allowed in a single post is 10.
• The maximum number of image/GIF blocks allowed in a single post is 30.
• The maximum number of video blocks allowed in a single post is 10. However, at this time you can only upload one video per post.
• The maximum number of audio blocks allowed in a single post is 10.
• There is an overall post size limit of 1MB.

In cases where two limits overlap each other, the more restrictive limit applies.

There is a limit of 1,000 content blocks in a single post.

Did you know? You can fit approximately one-third of Moby Dick in a Tumblr post.

What About Post Types?

By default, all new original posts created via the new editor are considered text type posts. The semantic of a single “post type” no longer makes sense for NPF posts that can have a variety of content block types rather than emphasizing a single content type.

That said, NPF posts are mapped to a legacy post type depending on what content blocks you add to your post. You can read more about the logic here.

Tumblr Themes

Posts created using the new editor may display differently than legacy posts. To reduce the impact of this on blog themes, we added a simple CSS patch to your blog’s theme to improve the way posts appear on your blog. It’s on for everyone by default.

If you’re using a premium theme from ourtheme garden, please check your theme’s page to find the support contact and reach out to the theme developer. We recommend browsing our curated list of featured themes, where all of them marked with a red star are designed for compatibility with the new editor:
https://www.tumblr.com/themes/collection/featured

While we recommend sticking to themes from the theme garden to ensure you’re using a theme that is safe to use, there are reliable third-party sources for themes. Check out these makers on Tumblr, for example: @codingcabin,@glenthemes, and@rachaelthemes are all great resources. If you’re unsure of where to begin, we recommend a modern, up-to-date theme, like Vision or Stereo. Theme developer @eggdesign also built a theme template that works with new posts, making it easier to create something of your own!

If you’re using a free theme or have created your own, you can learn more about creating or editing a Tumblr theme in our documentation:
https://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/custom_themes

You can also learn more about HTML and CSS in general by checking out these free resources:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn
https://www.w3schools.com/
https://www.freecodecamp.org/

Documentation

For more on what went into creating the Neue Post Format, check out our Engineering blog post. The complete NPF specifications can be found on Github.