Please Medium, Let Us Zoom!

Help your older and vision-impaired readers.

For some reason the iPadOS app for Medium does not support the either the traditional zoom mechanism or changing the font size. When reading a story it does appear to honor the system-wide preference of Text Size (accessible from the Display & Brightness System Preference page.) However, it does not seem to honor that selection when browsing through story selection. Even with the system-wide font size it would be nice to be able to change the font while viewing an individual story. The pinch out to zoom functionality would be a nice addition as well because Medium’s centered text leaves so much of the iPad display empty.

I could opt for reading Medium in Safari where the normal zoom control of Command-+ works as expected. Not only does this effectively increase the font size, it also expands the text area to take up more of the screen. Of course, if you have the Medium app installed clicking on a link to a Medium story will switch to the app. What then is the point of the app when to get a better reading experience I can use the browser? Would we not be better served by a Progressive Web App for Medium that could be added directly to the Home Screen but still render through Safari? What benefit does the Medium app actually provide?

Another missing feature from the Medium app is support for scrolling/advancing through the story using the keyboard arrow keys.