News Headlines Are Coming Back to X

X (formerly Twitter) has officially brought back headlines to news articles posted on its platform, a move that comes after X owner Elon Musk decided to remove them last October. 

However, headlines won't be displayed as they were before. They will instead appear as text over the thumbnail image of a news article from an external link.

Additionally, text will appear over the bottom corner of the image but will be cut out if the headline text is too long. 

Meanwhile, the source of the news article will be displayed at the bottom of the image, to provide readers with more context for the story. 

While headlines are back for most users, the feature remains unchanged for some iOS and Android devices, which could indicate a gradual roll out.

Why Did Musk Remove Headlines? 

In previous iterations, headlines appeared in a text bubble below the thumbnail of a news article, along with the headline and the website link. 

However, last August, Fortune reported that the Musk-owned app was working on removing headlines in future updates. In October, the multibillionaire proclaimed that the change was "coming from me directly" as he believed it would greatly improve the app's "esthetics [sic]."

This is coming from me directly. Will greatly improve the esthetics.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 22, 2023

While the update flattened and decreased the size of posts, many users opposed it over concerns about differentiating actual news portals from harmful and misleading links. 

Following this, Musk announced in November that a future update would bring back the overlay title above the URL image.

In an upcoming release, 𝕏 will overlay title in the upper potion of the image of a URL card

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2023