How to avoid Substack's Notes feed

Some people find Notes to be a waste of time, here's how to avoid it.

Nov 25, 2024

UPDATE: I goofed! You CAN change the default view in the Substack app already!

See the screenshot below from Ken Macko. Go to Settings then Appearance to change the default to your Inbox. Oops! Sorry, guys. My bad. I didn’t think to look under Appearance. 😳 🫢

I’ve noticed that a fair number of people are complaining about how the Substack app forces them into Notes when they open it. Once the app opens, they see their Notes feed and get sucked into it, even when they wanted to just read content instead of seeing social media posts.

Here’s how you can avoid seeing the Notes feed in just a few steps:

Delete the Substack app from your phone (you won’t need it and if you keep it, you’ll keep getting sent to the Notes feed when you open it).
Open your web browser.
Go to your Substack inbox page.
Bookmark your inbox page and always use it to open Substack.
You will no longer see your Notes feed as the default page on Substack.

This will now be your default page:

I understand that some might not like using a web browser instead of the Substack app, but using a browser is the price you pay for having the freedom to decide what you want to see first when you go to Substack. The app is controlled by Substack’s management, but your web browser and its bookmarks are not.

For the record, I believe that Substack’s management has deliberately set the Substack app to force readers into their Notes feed. They want users to be engaged in an endless waterfall of social media posts. How this encourages people to buy paid subscriptions and thus improve Substack’s business is beyond me. Notes has its virtues, but the end result is that people read less long-from content and more social media posts. 🤔

Am I missing something here? I understand that promoting posts on Notes can help get readers to a certain degree, but it seems to me that the time spent there simply takes away from reading newsletters, which is Substack’s core business.

Perhaps Substack’s management has some secret plans to monetize people’s Notes posts? If not, then Notes might end up being a gigantic mistake if it distracts people from reading newsletters. The fewer people that read newsletters, the less chance they’ll buy a paid subscription, and that means Substack makes less money.

Anyway, now you know how to avoid getting sucked into the Notes feed. If I were Substack’s management, I would add a feature to the Substack app that allows users to choose which page they want to see when the app is started. Let users opt to view their inbox instead of their Notes feed.

I hope this helps those of you who want to go back to reading long-form content instead of getting forced by Substack’s management into seeing the Notes feed.

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