X launches a History tab to consolidate bookmarks, likes, videos, and articles

At a glance:

• X has renamed the Bookmarks button in its iOS mobile app to History and added four sub-tabs — bookmarks, likes, videos, and articles — to consolidate saved content in one place.
• Videos and articles tabs will auto-populate based on what you watch or read on the platform, making History feel more like a personal web browser history than a manual save folder.
• The move is part of X's broader push to keep users and publishers on-platform, capitalizing on declining referral traffic from Facebook and Google for web publishers.

What changed in the X app

X is rolling out a new History tab that pulls together four categories of saved content — bookmarks, likes, videos, and articles — under a single entry point in the mobile app. The change was announced by Nikitia Bier, X's head of product, and is initially available on iOS. Where the Bookmarks button once sat in the left-side menu, it is now called History, and tapping it reveals a page organized into the four tabs listed above.

Bookmarks and likes are intentional saves: if you bookmark a post or like something, it shows up in the corresponding tab. The videos and articles tabs work differently — they are populated automatically based on what you watch or read while scrolling X. The History section is private to the user, Bier noted in the announcement, meaning other accounts cannot see what you have saved.

Previously, bookmarks lived in the main left-side menu and likes were buried as a tab on your user profile. Consolidating both into a single History destination eliminates the need to hunt through different parts of the app to find content you want to return to.

Why X is betting on on-platform content

The History tab repositions X closer to the experience of a web browser, where users can revisit pages they have already seen — even if they did not explicitly click a save button. That parallel is not accidental. The update comes at a moment when web publishers have reported a sharp decline in referral traffic from major platforms, driven by shifting algorithms and AI-powered experiences that reduce clicks to external sites.

X sees that shift as an opening. By making it easier to track and return to long-form articles written directly on the platform, the company hopes to attract more publishers and creators to publish inside X rather than linking out. X's long-form article format has been positioned as a way for businesses and creators to share updates that go beyond the platform's standard 280-character post limit. When users scroll and bookmark articles they find, they effectively build a personalized news reader inside the app — content that stays on X and keeps users engaged.

The History tab reinforces that strategy by surfacing saved articles alongside other content types, normalizing the habit of reading and returning to long-form posts within the platform.

What to watch next

The feature is live on iOS for now, and it remains to be seen whether X expands it to Android or adds additional sorting and filtering options. Publishers will also be watching closely to see if the easier tracking of on-platform articles translates into meaningful shifts in where they choose to publish. For creators, the History tab could become a useful reference tool for revisiting viral videos or popular threads, though the automatic population of the videos and articles tabs means some saved content may appear that users did not explicitly choose.