Medium you need to sort out the Mess of linking articles for Android users

Linking articles successfully using the Medium Android app is becoming almost impossible

Using Android in Medium must be something common. I am surely not unusual by often resorting to it, when convenient access to my PC is unavailable.

But something always makes me throw the phone down in frustration, and go fire up the PC, no matter how inconvenient, to get finished any post needing to reference other Medium articles, including even my own.

It happens a lot!

The problem begins in the Medium app when I access the article that I would like to reference, and choose to “Share” it.

Firstly there appears no method of copying to clipboard, despite options of sharing to seemingly almost every messaging app.

I don’t want to message it, I just want to reference it, but there appears no simple method of doing that.

So, I try to improvise, by sharing it to an app which wasn’t even meant for messaging; notepad, then selecting the text of the link to copy.

But then the link text needs to be selectively cut down, to try to remove the extraneous descriptive text that appears to have been added to the link by the Medium app when sharing the link to notepad.

Now, I expect that newly added link to function just like any internet link, by medium automatically converting it to the same format as it does when adding any other internet link.

But it doesn’t.

Instead, the Medium app recognises the link as something to be opened again in the Medium app.

So it opens its own link, removing any possibility of converting the link to a similar format as might be opened by some other reader, using some other platform.

So chances are my link will not be openable by anyone else, which completely kills the utility of linking.

This situation has existed for a while, well over a year.

I have two Android phones of completely different hardwares and versions of android, but both similarly defeat my best attempts to link effectively in Medium.

I know I can’t be alone with this frustration.

Assuming not, it is for sure hitting your popularity with mobile users.

It is in your interests to get that sorted out!

(btw, I did report this issue a long time ago to Medium tech support, but it obviously made no difference)