Ecency 4.4.1: Shorts, Post Templates, Dictation and a Faster surfing
Published on HivePostify by @ecency · Fri Aug 14 2026
Ecency web 4.4.1 is live on [ecency.com](https://ecency.com).
This one took a while. There are quite a lot of changes in the release, including some things we've been working on for a few months, so I'll try to cover the important ones without turning this into a changelog. Some of the changes were released way before but we didn't announce those changes.
Probably the first thing you'll notice is Shorts in Waves. We also added post templates, dictation, translation, a few new Points features and a lot of smaller changes around performance and usability.
Blog hosting related changes are not covered here. That part grew quite a bit and we'll have a separate post about it.
Shorts in Waves ---------------
There is a new Shorts tab on [ecency.com/waves](https://ecency.com/waves).
It's basically a vertical video view for video waves. Ecency already aggregates short-form content from multiple sources, so Shorts uses those same sources but filters for videos and gives them a proper full-screen player.
One thing we specifically wanted to fix here was vertical video. Previously it could end up inside a landscape player, which obviously isn't great for something recorded vertically. The player now follows the video's aspect ratio.
Upvoting is also intentionally simpler here. Tap the heart and that's it. We didn't think bringing the full voting slider into this interface made much sense.
You can see votes and tips on the side while watching.
Waves itself got a few other changes at the same time:
Tags can be pinned and become tabs next to For You and Following.
Individual Waves sources can also be pinned. This is useful if you want to browse one source instead of everything mixed together.
Tip counts are shown directly on waves, including whether you already tipped something.
We added a small onboarding checklist for new accounts too. Before this, a new user could land on an almost empty Waves page and there wasn't much explaining what to do next.
Empty personal feeds now point people toward Waves for the same reason.
Post templates --------------
This has been requested a few times.
You can now write something in the editor and save it as a template from the publish menu. Templates can include the title, tags and post settings.
For example, if you publish a weekly report with mostly the same structure and tags, you don't have to rebuild that setup every week.
There is one small safeguard: if you load a template and try to publish it without really changing anything, we'll warn you first. It's surprisingly easy to load a template, forget about it and accidentally publish the original text again.
Dictation ---------
There's now a microphone button in the editor.
Click it, record what you want to say and stop the recording. Ecency transcribes it and puts the resulting text into the editor.
Transcription uses Points. The cost is shown before you use it and there's a free daily allowance as well. We also limit recording length, mostly to prevent someone accidentally leaving a recording running and spending far more Points than they intended.
This is one of those features that might sound a little unusual in a blogging editor, but after using it for quick drafts and notes it actually feels quite natural. Another tool helping you to create content faster, now possible even without keyboard.
Translation is in the editor now --------------------------------
We've had translation on the reading side and this release expands it.
If a post is in another language, readers can translate it from the post actions.
Writers can now do the opposite from inside the editor. So if you've written something in English and also want to publish a translated version, you can do that without moving the text back and forth between Ecency and another translation tool.
Optional AI disclosure ----------------------
We also added an AI disclosure option to the publish menu.
If you used AI to help with the text or images in a post, you can mark that when publishing. The post will show a small badge.
This isn't mandatory. Nothing is enabled by default and we're not trying to decide what does or doesn't count as "AI content" for people.
The interesting part for us was making the information portable. The disclosure is stored in shared post metadata, so it isn't limited to Ecency. Other Hive applications can read the same field and display it if they want, some already does.
About short comments and Points -------------------------------
A small clarification that will hopefully save some confusion.
Comments and waves shorter than 25 characters, after removing links, don't receive Ecency Points and don't count toward the daily comment quest.
This rule isn't new.
What was wrong was that we weren't telling you about it.
So someone could write a short reply, see that their quest hadn't moved and reasonably assume something was broken. The composer now warns you before posting when the content is below the minimum.
Ecency Pro ----------
Ecency Pro is currently $19.99/year.
It adds the verified badge next to your account, includes a hosted blog at yourname.blogs.ecency.com and unlocks Insights for other creators. Without Pro, Insights is limited to your own account. It has also many free AI allowance and custom claimable blogs.
Subscriptions also help us pay for Ecency development and infrastructure.
You can gift Points now -----------------------
Another new addition is Gift Points. If you had Points balance, you could already do that by transferring but what if you didn't have enough?!
You can purchase Ecency Points by card and send them directly to another Hive account. Enter the username, choose the amount and optionally leave a note.
We wanted this to be straightforward. If you want to give someone Points, they shouldn't need to go through an exchange or understand how to purchase crypto first.
We also fixed a related usability problem. If you're trying to use something that requires more Points than you currently have, Ecency can now take you directly to the top-up flow instead of just telling you that you don't have enough.
Tags: #hive-125125#web#release#ecency#announcement#updates#dictation#content-creation#hive#tools