So, how many claps can you give on Medium?

With the amount that people clap these days, you’d think it was limited to just 1 clap. I mean seriously, people need to clap a little more for us. Don’t they know you can hold down that button and watch the fireworks?

At any rate, just how many claps can you give on Medium?

How Many Claps Can You Give On Medium?

The limit to the amount of claps you can give is technically 50. 

It’s anywhere from 1 clap to 50 claps, but the problem is the amount of time it takes to give 50 claps.

You seriously need to hold down the claps button for close to 14 seconds to get all the way up to 50. Check the animation down below.

The Medium clapping feature was made so readers could show the author just how much they enjoyed their story. If they liked it a little, they might give it 1 clap. If they liked it a little more, they might give it 10 claps, and if they loved it like their favorite book, they might load it up with 50 claps.

The problem is, it takes time to do this. If I really loved the story, I’d just share it on social media probably and skip the clapping.

There’s A Problem With Medium’s Clapping Feature

It’s boring for me to sit there, hold down my mouse clicker, and wait while it slowly builds up to 50 claps. It’s not exactly the greatest design Medium ever came up with, but at the end of the day, maybe the time it takes to give 50 claps isn’t even a problem.

I talk about this in another post, but Medium really just designed this system so they could award more money to the deserving author. Before if I liked a story on Medium, even a little bit, I’d “recommend” it, which is basically the same as a Facebook like.

But what if I came across a story I REALLY liked? Well, I could recommend that story too, but there was no way to tell Medium I liked that story better since I awarded both the less-enjoyable story and the more-enjoyable story the same way.

This (above) is what the bottom of articles used to look like.

This causes a lot of problems from the Medium Partner Program standpoint. I’ll let you read my other article if you want to find out more about that.

At any rate, that’s the answer to the “How many claps can you give on Medium?” question!