Changelog

Updates and improvements to Otherkin.net, newest first.

August 2026

  • Two more kintype tags approved and placed in the tag hierarchy.
  • Tags got a big cleanup — duplicate tags now point at one canonical form, dozens of pending tags were approved as kintypes, and the tag hierarchy now links broad tags to their subtypes.
  • The site no longer breaks in browsers that block cookies or site data — themes and drafts just fall back gracefully.
  • Choosing images for a post now offers only the formats the site can process, so an unsupported photo is caught before you upload it rather than after.

July 2026

  • Fixed profile picture and banner uploads failing with no explanation when the photo was in a format your browser could not open — common when uploading straight from a phone's camera roll.
  • Signing up no longer fails when our mail server is briefly unavailable — your account is created right away and the confirmation email is retried until it goes through.
  • Accessibility: theme accent colours now meet contrast standards, and the colour-blind, reading-guide, reading-mask and hide-counts settings now work.
  • Links in comments are now coloured and underlined, like everywhere else.
  • In the editor, clicking a link now opens it for editing; Ctrl/Cmd-click follows the link.
  • The writing-prompt tool can now drop the prompt straight into your post as a quote to respond to.
  • Comments now keep the paragraph spacing you see while writing them.
  • Several settings, article, event, and profile pages now display with consistent styling.
  • Search results for comments, groups, and events now display with proper styling.
  • Event search now finds events by their location, and you can filter with location:cityname — e.g. location:portland.
  • Group and event search now looks inside their descriptions too, not just their names.
  • Search now covers groups and events too — find them by name alongside posts, tags, people, and comments.
  • Your profile's Posts and Articles tabs and a group's Posts page now have sort and post-type/visibility filters too.
  • Post-type and visibility filters are now also on the tag pages and the article browser, beside sort.
  • Feeds now let you filter by post type and by visibility (public, clustered, group, or private) — right next to the existing sort control.
  • The Universe feed now also shows the clustered and group posts you're allowed to see — not only public posts.
  • Fixed a few visual glitches where some elements were missing their rounded corners, background, or shadow.
  • The font picker in Display settings now shows each option in its own typeface, with a live preview so you can see how a font looks before choosing it.
  • Added dyslexia- and low-vision-friendly fonts and adjustable text spacing and reading width in accessibility settings.
  • Creating a new cluster from the post editor works again — it was failing with a "network error."
  • The formatting toolbar now stays in view while you scroll through a long post, so you don't have to scroll back up to reach it.
  • Your unpublished draft changes to a published article now appear on your Drafts page — easy to find, keep editing, or discard.
  • Edit a published article as a private draft — your changes stay hidden until you choose to publish them.
  • Requesting a password reset now works even if you never confirmed your email — the reset link doubles as confirming your address.
  • Voting on your own post no longer shows a raw error page — the vote buttons are hidden on posts you wrote.
  • Articles now open on the full post page — with comments, reactions, tags, and consistent styling.
  • Notifications: "Mark all read" now returns you to your list, and a new "Clear all" button lets you delete your notifications.
  • Posts made in a group now show which group they're from, in feeds and on the post page.
  • Editing a comment now lets you correct which system member is shown as its author.
  • Editing a post now lets you correct which system member is shown as its author.
  • Fixed a rare error that could stop confirmation prompts and copy buttons from working when a click landed directly on their text.
  • New — download all your content (posts, comments, profile, and uploads) as a JSON file from Settings → Export.
  • New — take an optional guided tour of the site, launchable from your welcome page or Settings.
  • Bulleted and numbered lists now show their markers again in posts, comments, and info pages.
  • Comment formatting now also includes lists, quotes, strikethrough, inline code, emoji, and click-to-reveal spoiler blocks for content warnings.
  • Comments now have a formatting toolbar — add bold, italics, links, and @mentions as you write.
  • You're now notified when someone comments on your post, replies to your comment, or @mentions you in a comment.
  • Fixed a rare JavaScript error that could occur when hovering over certain page text.
  • Tag pages now line up the Follow and Subscribe buttons beside the tag name, and group headers no longer crowd the description on mobile.
  • Group owners can now transfer ownership of their group to another member.
  • Group owners and moderators can now subscribe to their group's post and event feeds.
  • Group members can now grab a personal subscription link for a group's posts and events feed right from the group page.
  • New "Galaxy timeline" feed — subscribe to your personal home feed (people you orbit, your groups, and posts shared with your clusters) in any feed reader.
  • Added a Feeds settings page to get your private feed links for posts, events, and RSVPs, with one-click copy and the ability to regenerate a link if it leaks.
  • You can now subscribe to a private calendar of the events you've RSVP'd to and add it to your calendar app.
  • Feeds are now available in RSS as well as Atom — add ?format=rss to any feed URL for classic RSS readers.
  • You can now subscribe to Otherkin.net feeds — a whole-community stream plus per-profile, per-tag, and event calendars — with Subscribe buttons and automatic feed-reader discovery.
  • After reporting a post, you're returned to the page you were on instead of the Universe feed.
  • Removed stray developer text that was showing at the bottom of some pages.
  • Account recovery and confirmation pages now match the site's styling.
  • Screen readers now correctly announce the post editor and untitled posts in feeds.
  • Event and group category labels are now legible on the dark theme.
  • Links, tags, and highlighted text now meet accessibility contrast standards across all colour themes.
  • Improved screen-reader labelling on the composer, settings, and search pages.
  • Fixed hidden helper text that was mistakenly visible on feeds and some other pages.
  • Sign-in, registration, and password-reset links now always open the fully styled pages.
  • The account reactivation page now displays as a properly styled form.
  • Fixed buttons that appeared unstyled on the account reactivation and username-change pages.
  • Your chosen font size and typeface now apply correctly across the site.
  • Group owners and moderators can now invite users directly to closed or secret groups; invited users receive a notification and can accept or decline from the group page.
  • Groups can now be browsed by tag, visibility, and membership type on the groups list page.
  • You can now restrict who can comment, follow, mention, and signal you to members of a specific cluster.
  • You can now remove individual images from photo posts and replace the file on audio posts while editing.
  • Signals now show as compact boosts with a framed preview of the original post; upvotes and comments route to the original, keeping one unified thread
  • Audio posts now accept M4A (.m4a) files.
  • Uploading an unsupported audio or image file no longer leaves a broken post with no media, and you can now add the file by editing a post that has none.
  • Groups now sort by recent activity by default, and articles by last updated — the previous sort options are still available.
  • Trending has moved into Brightest as a new "Signals" tab, alongside Votes and Comments.
  • The Report action is now a clear button everywhere, and a group's header buttons line up neatly instead of stacking.
  • The "Report" links on groups, posts, and events now look like clickable links instead of plain text.
  • Long group descriptions now show a "Read more…" link to the full text, and a group's About tab keeps the description's line breaks.
  • Group, event, and search text previews no longer run separate paragraphs together.
  • Group description previews no longer run separate paragraphs together — the text is now properly spaced.
  • Group descriptions on a profile's Groups tab now show as clean text instead of exposing raw formatting tags.
  • The Outer Reach is now a full settings section rather than a "coming soon" entry — open it from the settings menu or the settings home page.
  • Settings options now appear as clearly clickable cards, each showing its name above a short description, so it's obvious what every option does and that you can select it.
  • Fixed a mobile layout issue where feed and profile pages could extend slightly past the right edge of the screen.
  • On mobile, the new-post button no longer covers page navigation at the bottom of feeds and lists.
  • The sidebar now remembers which sections you've collapsed or expanded as you move between pages.
  • In the post composer, the description editor now sits below the image, audio, video, quote, or link fields so the main content leads.
  • Every post type now has the full rich editor for its description, so links and formatting work everywhere, not just on text and article posts.
  • The Outer Reach settings section now opens your beacon page directly instead of a placeholder.
  • Group pages now load faster.
  • You can now view a public changelog of site updates.
  • Kinship star tooltips now list the virtues you've earned.
  • Renamed the "Rising" feed sort to "Brightest."
  • Added sort controls to feeds, tags, articles, events, and groups.
  • Improved text contrast and readability across the light themes.

June 2026

  • Featured articles now appear inline in the article list with a gold border.
  • Fixed group ownership so the owner no longer shows up twice on the group about page.