How to post an article on X

Updated September 2026 · Eligibility per X's Help Center

X has a long-form format called Articles. Unlike a normal post, an Article has a title, a cover image, headings, inline images and no character limit, and it shows up on your profile and in the timeline as a card. This guide walks through how to write an article on X and publish it, then shows a faster route if you already write in Markdown.

Who can publish Articles on X

Anyone can read an Article, but not everyone can write one. According to X's Help Center, publishing is limited to Premium and Premium+ subscribers, Premium Business and Premium Organizations. Individual subscribers get access after their account has been reviewed and the blue checkmark is applied. The Basic tier is not on that list.

Access was widened in January 2026; before that it was Premium+ and organizations only. X changes these rules from time to time, so if the editor does not open for you, check the Help Center page above before assuming something is broken.

Step 1: Open the Articles editor

The editor lives at x.com/compose/articles. That page lists your drafts and published Articles, with a button to start a new one. Each draft gets its own editing page, and drafts are kept there until you publish or delete them, so you can close the tab and come back later.

Use a desktop browser. The editor is built for the web on a computer, and that is also where pasting and image uploads are easiest.

Step 2: Add a title and write the body

The title is a separate field at the top, not part of the body. Keep it short enough to read in the timeline card. Below it, the body works like a simple word processor: bold, italic, strikethrough, links, bulleted and numbered lists, and quotes.

Write the way you would for a blog post: short paragraphs, one idea each. A wall of text reads worse on a phone than it looks on your monitor.

Step 3: Structure it with headings

The editor has two heading levels inside the body, a heading and a subheading. Use headings for the main sections and subheadings sparingly. If your draft comes from somewhere with more levels (H1 to H6 in Markdown), you will have to flatten it to two.

Step 4: Add images, embeds and a cover image

• Inline images: insert them at the point in the text where they belong. X allows up to 25 images per Article.
• Posts, videos and GIFs: Articles can embed these as well, which is useful for quoting a thread or showing a demo.
• Cover image: set it in the cover area above the title. It is the first thing people see in the timeline card, so pick a wide image with the subject near the center, since the card crops the edges.

There is no table button. The usual workaround is a screenshot of the table inserted as an image. Code has limited support too; this page covers code blocks, tables and dividers in detail.

Step 5: Preview and publish

Read the whole draft once more, top to bottom, ideally on a narrow window. Check that images landed where you meant, links work and the cover crops well. Then click Publish. The Article gets its own URL and appears on your profile, and a post with the Article card goes out to your followers.

After publishing, the card is what people react to. If you want to see whether it is picking up speed or has stalled, X Viral Monitor shows views per hour on posts in your timeline.

The faster way: write in Markdown, paste once

Writing directly in the X editor is fine for a short piece. For anything longer, most people draft in Obsidian, Notion, Typora or VS Code, and that is where the trouble starts: paste Markdown into X and you get literal ##, ![](…) lines instead of images, and tables collapsed into pipes. Rebuilding the formatting by hand takes longer than writing did.

X Article Markdown Paste is a Chrome extension that does the conversion on paste. The workflow becomes:

1. Write the article in Markdown in whatever editor you use.
2. Open x.com/compose/articles and start a draft.
3. Copy the Markdown and press Ctrl+V in the editor. You can also click Import Markdown in the editor toolbar and pick a .md file, or drag the file onto the browser window.
4. Review the draft and publish as usual.

What it handles for you:

• The first H1 becomes the Article title, and headings are folded to the two levels X has.
• Remote images are downloaded and uploaded through X's own media upload. Relative paths like ./img/chart.png resolve from a local folder you choose once.
• The cover can come from the first image, a cover: field in frontmatter, or a local image you drop in, or you can skip it.
• Fenced code blocks become X's native code block. Tables become an image or a native X table, your choice.
• A tweet URL on its own line becomes an embedded post.

Nothing is published automatically. You always end up with a normal X draft to check before clicking Publish.

The free version covers all text formatting, code blocks and dividers, with up to 3 images, 1 table and 1 tweet embed per paste and a short signature at the end that you can delete. New installs get a 14-day trial of Pro, which removes the limits. See pricing for the current plans.

Install from Chrome Web Store

Quick checklist

• Premium, Premium+, Premium Business or Premium Organizations account, with the checkmark applied.
• Draft started at x.com/compose/articles on desktop.
• Title, two heading levels at most, short paragraphs.
• Images placed, 25 or fewer, and a cover that survives cropping.
• Read it through once, then Publish.