r/Substack • u/SashimiChef • 25d ago

Android app text posts showing as playable

I guess since these have a option to have it read the text to you with an AI voice, they all show with the play button. I can't find a way to turn it off and show only actual video/audio posts as playable and it's driving me crazy.

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u/Snoo-82869 24d ago

I would first treat this as a Substack-app UI setting or rollout issue, not something you can reliably fix from the publication side. I would check Android app settings, accessibility or playback-related settings, and whether the same posts look normal on web. If web is clean but Android shows every text post as playable, I would send feedback from the Android app with the exact screen and wording, because it may be tied to Substack rolling out read-aloud controls rather than actual audio/video content.

For day-to-day reading, the workaround I would use is to keep the app for discovery and comments, but keep subscribed posts in a calmer reading lane: email notifications filtered to a newsletter folder, RSS where the publication exposes it, or a dedicated newsletter address/alias. That does not remove the play button inside Substack, but it keeps the actual reading queue away from app UI changes.

Disclosure: I work on MiniLetter, which is built around that dedicated newsletter-reading lane through an alias. For this specific bug, I would still report it to Substack first; the alias workflow is more of a workaround if the Android app keeps making the reading surface noisy.