Why Doesn't Tumblr Search Work

Changes on Tumblr

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2021

🌟 New

For those of you testing the new Notes view, we now have new notes icon colors per app color palette.
We now require a "User Agent" header for public API requests, check out the docs.
The blog follow API endpoint will now return a "429 Limit Exceeded" error if the user has gone over their 200 follows per day limit.
We've been experimenting with different ways of serving optimized images and GIFs on web and iOS.

🛠 Fixed

Nothing to report here this time.

🚧 Ongoing

We're working to fix a bug in Tumblr for iOS 22.5 that's causing a crash on the Explore view.

🌱 Upcoming

We're working on a new major version of the beta post editor on web, leveraging parts of the WordPress Gutenberg project.

Experiencing an issue? File a Support Request and we'll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with the community.

Friday, November 19th, 2021

🌟 New

In the new search UI, we now sort results by note count (instead of a combination of note count and published time) when a time range filter is applied. Thanks to those of you who sent in feedback about this!
Recommendations will not include any blogs you've unfollowed in the last 30 days.
For those of you with the new notes view, it now has a fixed height and is scrollable. Again, big thanks to everyone who shared their feedback about this.

🛠 Fixed

All platforms and backend:

The archive tag filter and frequently used tags issue we mentioned on Tuesday has been fixed.

Web:

Fixed an issue that caused very long followed tags to clip outside of the "Following" box on the Explore page.
Blocking a blog in the notes view will no longer dismiss the post.

iOS:

We rolled back a change that caused GIFs to be blurry in the iOS app. Thanks to everyone who reported this!
Version 22.4 of the iOS app fixes an issue where the "Follow" button could appear in your activity next to a blog you just followed.

Android:

Version 22.4.1 is now available to everyone and fixes the video play button issue that we mentioned on Tuesday.

🚧 Ongoing

We've made some significant progress in fixing the longstanding bug that caused inaccurate follower counts. If you've been affected by this bug, you can expect to see a drop in your follower count. Don't worry! That's happening because deleted or terminated blogs are getting cleared out. The resulting number will be accurate.

🌱 Upcoming

Nothing to share today.

Experiencing an issue? File a Support Request and we'll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with the community.

Tuesday, November 16th, 2021

🌟 New

The mass post editor now includes a "Make private" option.
The time range in the new search UI now defaults to the "All time" instead of "Last month." Thanks to everyone who shared their feedback about this!
Reporting a note in the new notes view now shows you a confirmation message if the report was successfully submitted, or an error message if the request failed.

🛠 Fixed

Fixed a race condition when following a blog via the API.
Fixed an issue where the text in a legacy post would be duplicated if the last item in the post was a read more. The dashboard will now ignore read mores at the end of legacy posts.
Fixed an issue in the Vampire and Ghost palettes where the "Block" and "Report" options in the meatball menu became invisible when hovered.
Fixed a baseline alignment issue when adding tags to a post.
Fixed an issue where blog cards would cover the blog avatar in the dashboard in Chromium browsers.

🚧 Ongoing

The play button on native videos is unresponsive in the Android app if you have media auto-play set to "Never." We're releasing a hotfix for this: Version 22.4.0.01. It'll be in the Play Store shortly. See our announcement here for workarounds in the meantime.
We're currently fixing an issue that caused the archive tag filter and frequently used tags in in-blog search to disappear.

🌱 Upcoming

Nothing to share today.

Experiencing an issue? File a Support Request and we'll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with the community.

Friday, November 12th, 2021

🌟 New

The latest version of the iOS app (22.3) introduces a tabbed Dashboard experience, with two tabs: "Following" and "Stuff for you".
We've added a blog setting on web to disable the usage of media in incoming asks. (This setting was already available in the mobile apps.)
To improve performance, the iOS app will now try to load GIFs sized closer to the width of the current view.
The iOS app now has even more support for Dynamic Type! Your iOS device settings should now affect even more of the experience.

🛠 Fixed

On web, toggling "allow anonymous asks" in blog settings works again.
On web, the Escape key once again closes a lightboxed image or photoset.
On web, blocking a blog from a 1:1 messaging conversation should now properly close that conversation.
We fixed an issue that was causing column widths on web to be miscalculated for folks using Safari on desktop.
For folks seeing the test of a new Notes view on web, we've made various fixes to the links you see in that view. Thanks for the feedback on this!

🚧 Ongoing

Nothing ongoing to report today.

🌱 Upcoming

Nothing upcoming to report today.

Experiencing an issue? File a Support Request and we'll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with the community.

Tuesday, November 9th, 2021

🌟 New

Version 22.3 of the Android app gives you the option to allow/disallow asks that contain media (this toggle has been available ~~on web and~~ in the iOS app for some time).

Edit: This toggle isn't available on web just yet, but we're working on it!

🛠 Fixed

Fixed an issue where some Windows users would be unable to navigate the dashboard using the J hotkey.
Fixed an issue on blog archives where multi-line tags would be cut off.
Fixed an issue that prevented replies and reblogs from being reported in the new notes view (currently out to a handful of folks for testing).
The NPF read endpoint now includes scheduled post information. The docs have been updated to reflect this.
Fixed an issue where a post preview/thumbnail in activity would be incorrect (if the root post was edited). It'll now show a preview from the reblog trail instead.

Version 22.3 of the iOS app is now available and contains fixes for the following issues:

The edit avatar pop-up menu would be obscured when editing your blog's appearance.
The avatar of a blocked blog you had previously messaged could appear in your list of conversations.
GIFs in certain spots (blog headers, blog carousels, blogcard previews, and followed tag carousels) would still animate when media auto-play was disabled.

Version 22.3 of the Android app is currently rolling out to everyone and contains fixes for the following issues:

Folks on Android 11+ were unable to schedule posts.
Post permalinks that contained the word "tagged" would lead to an error (a special thanks to those who reported this issue on some of our previous posts!).
Fast reblog/queue would sometimes scroll instead of selecting a blog.

🚧 Ongoing

No ongoing issues to report today.

🌱 Upcoming

The "Try these posts" section in Explore will be replaced by the new "Stuff for you" tab on the Dashboard, starting soon in version 22.3 of the iOS app.

Experiencing an issue? File a Support Request and we'll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with the community.

Friday, November 5th, 2021

🌟 New

When you run out of results or don't get results on tagged pages in the mobile apps, we now suggest not just related tags, but also trending tags.
The Staff Picks section on web now features some tags we care a lot about!
Tag carousels no longer display image previews in the iOS app.
We've removed the "Try these posts" section of Explore in the iOS app; we're planning to re-add this via the Tabbed Dashboard feature, which will be out soon.
Posts you've dismissed should now be dismissed from all possible sources, not just recommendations in the Dashboard.

🛠 Fixed

Fixed an issue preventing native videos from displaying on blogs with custom domains.
On web, blocking a blog via its blog card on a post will now properly dismiss the associated post from view.

🚧 Ongoing

There's an issue in the Tumblr app for Android if you're running Android 11 and up, that's preventing you from scheduling posts. This'll be fixed in the upcoming 22.3 version of the app!

🌱 Upcoming

We'll be rolling out a refresh of the Account and Dashboard settings pages on web to bring them up to speed with the rest of the new web experience.

Experiencing an issue? File a Support Request and we'll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with the community.

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2021

🌟 New

We are slowly releasing a new UI on search which includes time range filters. It's out to 25% of folks on web and Android (starting in version 22.2). Check it out and let us know what you think!

🛠 Fixed

Fixed an issue on web where opening a new post, then dismissing it would cause videos in the dash to become unplayable.
Fixed an issue on desktop web where multiple notes or share menus could be open at the same time.

🚧 Ongoing

No ongoing issues to report today.

🌱 Upcoming

Documentation for the paywall block will be added to the NPF specification on GitHub shortly.

Experiencing an issue? File a Support Request and we'll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with the community.

Friday, October 29th, 2021

🌟 New

In the Android app, the dashboard now has two tabs: "Following" and "Stuff for you." The tabbed dashboard will be in the iOS app soon!
We removed the ability to double tap to unlike in the iOS app (but double tap to like is still supported).

🛠 Fixed

Fixed an issue where native videos could not be played in the dashboard.
Fixed an issue where photos were not rendered in the correct order when viewed on web.
The keyboard shortcut (alt + c or option + c) for creating a new post on web has been reinstated.

Version 22.1 of Tumblr for iOS has been released and includes fixes for the following bugs:

The photo album selector was invisible in the True Blue palette.
The aforementioned GIF playback speed issue which was affecting newer iOS devices.

🚧 Ongoing

We're doing some work to fix longstanding issues that caused inaccurate follower counts. Stay tuned!
Reminder to check out the "Use better tagged and search URL decoding" option on your blog's /customize page (https://tumblr.com/customize). One quick note about this: You don't need to make any updates to the tags on your posts. Only any hard-coded URLs to /tagged and /search pages. Learn more here and reach out to Support with any questions.

🌱 Upcoming

Nothing to share here today.

Experiencing an issue? File a Support Request and we'll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with the community.

Tuesday, October 26th, 2021

🌟 New

OAuth 2 authentication is now available for Tumblr API consumers.
There's now a "URL Handling" toggle available in your blog customization options to use the new URL decoding for tagged and search links.
Image objects in NPF should now always be sorted by width, descending so the widest is first in the array.

🛠 Fixed

Nothing to list here today.

🚧 Ongoing

Version 22.1 of the iOS app will fix the issue of super fast GIF playback on newer iOS devices.

🌱 Upcoming

On November 1st we'll begin requiring that all requests to the Tumblr API are secured via HTTPS, and we'll be blocking all insecure HTTP requests.
On December 1st we'll enable the above new URL handling mechanics across all blogs.

Experiencing an issue? File a Support Request and we'll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with the community.

Changes to Tagged and Search URLs on Tumblr

Heads up! We're changing the way we parse URLs on tagged and search pages, to properly encode/decode them to support spaces, hyphens, plus signs, and underscores. Most of these changes will be invisible to you, but if you've kept bookmarks or links to tagged and search pages on Tumblr or your blog, read on!

We're going to start this process by rolling out a new setting you can enable when customizing your blog on the web:

Toggle on the Blog Customize page titled "Use better tagged and search URL decoding".

What does it do? Today, and with that toggle disabled, going to a blog's tagged URL like https://staff.tumblr.com/tagged/tumblr-tuesday would turn "tumblr-tuesday" into "tumblr tuesday" and you'd see posts with that tag. Same with search URLs. If you have that toggle enabled, that https://staff.tumblr.com/tagged/tumblr-tuesday URL will be decoded as "tumblr-tuesday" instead. If you want to link to the "tumblr tuesday" tag on your blog, you'll have to use "tumblr%20tuesday" in the URL. But this means that if you use certain special characters in your tags, you'll now properly be able to link to them!

The toggle above gives you early access to figure this all out. On December 1st, 2021, we'll be enabling this behavior for all blogs on Tumblr.

We'll update all of the links when you click on tags in Tumblr. However, if you manually added links to your tags in your blog description, theme, somewhere off Tumblr, saved bookmarks, or in posts (like a pinned post on your blog), then you'll need to update those links if they contain spaces, underscores, or hyphens. Spaces in tags will now be encoded as "%20" rather than "-" or "+". To do this, turn that toggle on, and click around on your tags to see if any of the URLs changed. Having this setting enabled and updating any links you've saved somewhere will future-proof you for when we roll this change out site-wide.

A table showing the new URL encoding behavior as it will appear in blog links.

We hope this is great news for anyone who uses tags in specific ways (we see you!) and has been frustrated that the way to link to them has been inconsistent, or just plain not working since… forever. We're working on several fixes across Tumblr related to these inconsistencies, but the majority of them require no action on your part.

Please hit us up via Support if you have any questions or concerns about this!