Substack tests text wrapping after years of writer requests

Why it matters

Substack is adding finer design controls without abandoning email delivery, where inconsistent rendering has kept its editor simpler than traditional publishing systems.

Substack, the publishing platform founded by Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Sethi, is testing a text-wrapping feature that places images on either side of a post while paragraphs flow around them.

Security researcher and reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) published a screenshot on August 24th showing two examples inside a Substack post: one image aligned to the left of several paragraphs and a second aligned to the right. Wong described the feature as work in progress.

The screenshot does not show the writing interface or how publishers select an image's position. It shows the resulting layout on a web post, where the image takes up part of the content column rather than interrupting the article as a full-width block. Substack has not tied the test to a public release date.

Wong, who is based in San Francisco, describes herself as a security researcher known for uncovering unreleased features in major apps. Her findings typically come from examining software before its developers announce the underlying product changes.

A small feature with a long request queue

Text wrapping is routine in older publishing systems. WordPress documents left and right image alignment as a standard editor option: writers insert an image, choose a side and allow the adjacent paragraph to fill the remaining space.

Substack writers have asked for the same control for years. Comments on an official Substack product post from 2020 requested text wrapping shortly after Substack introduced image captions and alternative text. During writer office hours in July 2021, publishers again asked for smaller images that could sit beside copy instead of breaking the flow of a post. Requests continued in product discussions in 2022 and 2023.

The delay reflects a problem baked into Substack's product. A post must work as a webpage, inside Substack's apps and as an email delivered through clients with uneven support for modern layout rules. In a March 2023 product discussion, a Substack staff member said the platform probably centered images because wrapping did not render consistently across email tools, while leaving open the possibility of exploring the feature.

Wong's screenshot suggests Substack has found an implementation it considers ready for internal testing. The consequential detail will be how the layout degrades on narrow phone screens and in email clients that cannot reproduce the web version. A reliable fallback would let publishers use more magazine-like page designs without producing broken newsletters for part of their audience.

Substack returns to the editor

Best and Sethi previously worked together at messaging app Kik, while McKenzie came from journalism. That mix shaped Substack's original pitch: give writers simple publishing, payments and distribution tools while keeping the technical machinery out of view.

The trade-off has always been limited design control. Substack currently promotes its editor as capable of formatting long-form posts, embedding media and managing a publication archive, though its support documentation updated March 26th still says writers cannot change the alignment of text, headings or subheadings.

Substack has the capital to work through those constraints. Best, McKenzie and Sethi announced a $100 million Series C on July 17th, 2025, led by BOND and The Chernin Group, and said part of the money would fund better creator tools. Substack's current marketing materials claim 5 million paid subscriptions across the platform and say tens of millions of people use it each week.

Text wrapping will not alter Substack's economics. It would give writers a basic piece of editorial control that many have been requesting since Substack was a much smaller newsletter service. The test also shows the constraint facing every addition to its editor: Substack has to make one composition survive the open web, mobile apps and the least cooperative inbox in a subscriber list.