All Medium editor hacks

Tips, hacks and workarounds

The online Medium editor keeps you focussed. It’s meant to keep it simple & professional for readers and writers. Until you come across a use case where the editor is way too limited…

For these cases I created a list of tips, hacks and workarounds to style your blog. All items are presented as a simple instruction. There is for most items a link below each section to more detailed explanations.

🅃🄰🄱🄻🄴 🄾🄵 🄲🄾🄽🅃🄴🄽🅃🅂

1. Background Text color (Highlights)
2. Blur image
3. Buttons (with a link)
4. Code blocks
5. Code highlighting
6. Dynamic tables (with Gist)
7. Dynamic tables (with Google Spreadsheet)
8. Embedding
9. Emojis
10. Footnotes
11. Image grid (Images next to each other)
12. Keyboard shortcuts
13. Lists
14. Markdown
15. Subtitle
16. Strike-throughs
17. Tables
18. Tables of content
19. Underlines
20. Undo
21. Unicode

Background Text color (Highlights)

Highlighting is like most Word processors.

1. Left-click your mouse and hold, highlight your chosen text, let go of the mouse button. A little menu pops up.
2. Click the highlighter icon.

Introducing Highlights

Blur image

1. To blur an image use the following website:

https://www6.lunapic.com/editor/?action=blur

1. Copy/Insert into your Medium article

Blur Image: 4 Different Ways To Blur Images

Buttons (with a link)

1. Use a pic of a button or create your own button:

Da Button Factory - Free CTA Button Generator

2. Paste the PNG in your Medium article

3. Click on the image → Ctrl K → add link

Adding share buttons to your Medium article

Code blocks

1. Code block can be created by three times: ``` (triple back tick)

<codeblock/>

How to display code blocks in Medium

Code highlighting

Like tables, code highlighting can be added through Gists (so a GitHub account is required).

1. Create a Gist
2. Make the Gist public and copy the URL
3. Past the URL into your Medium article

Note there is a browser extension to easily add Gists to Medium:

• Chrome
• Firefox

How to add code highlighting in Medium articles without leaving the editor

Dynamic tables (with Gist)

The first option uses GitHub (so it assumes you have a GitHub account).

1. Create a Gist on GitHub with the following name: filename.csv
2. Create a table in CSV. For example with:

https://truben.no/table/

3. Past the CSV in the Gist filename.csv

4. Make the Gist public

5. Paste the Gist link in your Medium article

Note there is a browser extension to easily add Gists to Medium:

• Chrome
• Firefox

5 Tips for Embedding Tables in Your Medium Posts

Dynamic tables (with Google Spreadsheet)

This option uses Google Spreadsheet as an option.

1. Create a Google spreadsheet
2. Publicize the spreadsheet
3. Add the link to https://sheetsu.com/table-for-medium

4. Embed on Medium

5 Tips for Embedding Tables in Your Medium Posts

Embedding

1. + sign and then choose embed

2. Copy the URL and paste it into your Medium article

Medium uses embed.ly. URLs that can be embedded are in this list

https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/214981378-Embeds

Emojis

1. Go to https://www.webfx.com/tools/emoji-cheat-sheet/
2. Copy and paste the name into your Medium article 👌

Footnotes

Here I reference to a footnote¹

This is done like this: footnote^1

It doesn’t link to it, but you can make a section for footnotes like explained in the table of content section.

Citations and footnotes on Medium

Image grid (Images next to each other)

1. Click on + sign to select images from your computer
2. Select multiple files at once
3. Insert them into your article

Introducing image grids

Keyboard shortcuts

To find out shortcuts:

• macOS: ⌘+?
• Windows: Ctrl+?

A lot of actions can be done using shortcuts. Best to read this article:

Use these Medium keyboard shortcuts like a Pro [Checklist]

Line spacing (single-spaced line break)

1. Write a sentence

2. Shift Enter

Lists

• A bulleted list can be made by starting a line with * or -
• And then enter after this line

1. A numbered list can be made by starting a line with 1.
2. And then enter after this line

Medium Bullet Points, Numbered Lists, and Custom Lists

Markdown

1. Create a Gist on Github
2. Copy paste the URL into your article

Advance usage of Markdown:

Markdown To Medium — The fastest way to get your Markdown post onto Medium

Subtitle

1. Type your main title
2. Hit enter and type the next line
3. Select this line and click on the small “T”.

Strike-throughs

1. Go to https://yaytext.com
2. Write your text and copy it
3. Paste it in your article

Strikethrough text on Medium!

Tables

The simplest way to add a table to your article is by taking a screenshot:

1. Create a table with Excel, Google Spreadsheet or somewhere online (for example https://app.diagrams.net/).

2. Create a screenshot with a snipping tool

3. Copy/Insert the screenshot to your article

5 Tips for Embedding Tables in Your Medium Posts

Tables of content

The basic idea of creating a table of content is:

1. Divide your article into sections (+ → Add a new part).
2. Put your mouse on the section divider, right-click and choose Inspect. Get the name of the section which is something like ‘2a6d’.
3. Put the Section name in your article URL:

https://medium.com/p/[Articlecode][#SectionName]

For example for this article to the next divider

https://medium.com/p/4b04c28d6144/#2a6d

4. Now you put this URL in any link

Does always work very well, but hey it’s a hack.

Detailed explanation of the hack:

https://medium.com/@AllienWorks/creating-table-of-contents-for-medium-articles-5f9087377b82

https://medium.com/better-marketing/how-to-build-a-working-table-of-contents-for-your-medium-articles-c217e33d4da3

Underlines

1. Go to https://yaytext.com
2. Write your text and copy it
3. Paste it in your article

Strikethrough text on Medium!

Undo

Basically while writing just Ctrl Z

After publishing:

1. Edit article

2. Click on … button and then choose “See revision history”

Orisirisi I can help you with that.

Unicode

1. Go to https://yaytext.com
2. Write your text and copy it
3. Paste it in your article

Extra tips

To become a pro I recommended checking the embedded help:

• macOS: ⌘+?
• Windows: Ctrl+?

And also learn the toolbar by heart:

If you find another hack, please add one to the comments below.

More reading:

The Best Medium Article Formatting Guide