Medium Has an Image Problem

Images can appear differently on mobile, and it’s darn well frustrating

I have a gripe.

Don’t get me wrong—I like Medium as a platform. However, since starting to write articles last year, there is one problem that has frustrated me to the core: images.

You wouldn’t notice this problem if you only use the large built-in Unsplash gallery. Or if you get your pictures from places like Google Images. In fact, you wouldn’t notice it if you avoid the Medium mobile app altogether.

Most writers use full scale images, and this is never a problem. For writers like myself though, it can be a different story.

Often I will use portion-based screenshots in my articles—because that’s the nature of what I do. It was whilst writing my ‘How to Build a Custom Ribbon in Excel’ story this problem became most apparent. I needed to capture numerous screenshots of controls contained in the custom ribbon I was explaining.

Take a look at this button on your desktop web browser:

Just in case you’re not looking at this page on a desktop, here’s another one for you: