The in-app preview to show you how your writing will be rendered has always been sub-par. This is for two reasons:
- Every browser and email client has their own inconsistencies and quirks, so it's hard to get a perfect preview — and we were slightly worried about engendering a higher level of trust in our preview than would be warranted, since what you really need to do is send yourself a draft to see how the thing looks.
- Abject laziness — it's really hard to build out a good previewing and rendering engine, and we've been focused on other things.
This has been a very common complaint, and we've been working on it for a while. It's launched now, and it's way better. Here's what it looks like:

Or, of course, you can see your email in a web context:

This is the latest in a series of changes to make the act of iterating on your content and design easier. Some other changes in this vein that will be coming later this spring include:
- Adding this exact same previewing functionality to the settings pages, so you can preview new CSS, scaffolding, and theme/icon changes live;
- Adding this exact same previewing functionality to other "email-shaped" parts of the app such as custom transactional emails or automation-borne emails;
- Allowing you to switch not just between "web and email" contexts but between mobile and desktop ones, as well as different subscriber contexts ("how does this look for a free subscriber vs. a paid one?")
Thank you for your patience on this. We're excited to make it even better very, very soon.
Updated on
April 13, 2024
Related changes
Written by
Justin Duke
Justin Duke is a software engineer, lover of words, and the creator of Buttondown.