Unofficial Medium Unclap Guide (Updated 2023)

2023 update:

Table of Contents

(The useful stuff is near the end, but the stuff in the middle is still going to be fun to read.)

• General Medium ramblings
• Why clapping and unclapping may matter again starting 1 AUG 2023
• How to unclap on Desktop (2023)
• How to unclap on iOS (2023)
• How to unclap on Android (2023)

General Medium ramblings

If you, like me, have been on this site since forever, you’d know that Medium’s policies change every 1 to 3 years. While editing this, I realized that I am making a new version of this in exact 3 year intervals.

I was using Medium back when claps was not a thing. That button was a heart and it was called “Recommendations”, and you can only click it once per article.

I witnessed how they introduced claps; then saw the membership program 1.0 with payout determined by claps happen. I witnessed Hong Kong’s Cantonese / Chinese Medium blogging sphere’s rise and fall (with Medium no longer “boosting” non-English stories, not even putting them on the Following page); how the curation system was put in place; how it was obviously broken for a period of time; how they started hiring curators; how the partner program policies changed and changed, and how the main payout stat changed from claps to reading time.