Scholarly July 2026 Updates Recap

July started with the launch of Scholarly for Teams and ended with a complete rethink of how documents and files get created — with a new premium tier, a smarter voice assistant, richer podcasts, and a mobile onboarding flow in between. Here's the full rundown.

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Major Features

Scholarly for Teams

Scholarly for Teams launched: a shared workspace for a company, classroom, or research group, with per-seat billing, roles and invites, a team admin dashboard, and a shared library everyone on the team can build from. Each teammate gets their own weekly allowance of flagship-model AI credits, with unlimited use of standard and advanced models, plus access to top-tier models like Opus 4.8, Fable 5, Sonnet 5, and GPT 5.5. Teams can also set a shared brand kit and Custom Designs so everything the team creates looks consistent. Teams started at a self-serve minimum of one seat (so you can set it up solo and invite people later) and grew through July with dedicated marketing pages, expanded help docs, and clearer positioning around turning a company's existing handbooks, recordings, and decks into onboarding and training material. Teams is priced per seat ($45/month or $324/year) and is now a full plan on the pricing page next to Free and Premium.

How to use it: Open Teams setup from your profile menu, billing settings, or any plan screen, create your workspace, and invite teammates by email — you can start with just yourself and add people whenever you're ready.

A Renamed Premium Plan, and a New Laureate Tier

Scholarly's individual paid plan is now called Premium everywhere in the product — same price, same features, just one consistent name instead of several. Alongside it, Scholarly Laureate is a higher tier built for power users who lean hard on flagship AI models: it includes 2,000 weekly credits for flagship-model work (standard and advanced models stay unlimited on both Premium and Laureate), a usage meter in Settings showing your balance and reset time, and the option to top up credits during a heavy week without changing plans.

One AI PDF Creator for Any Document

The separate SOP, flowchart, lesson plan, and outline creators are now a single AI PDF Creator. Add your sources once, then pick the document type in the customize step — including four brand-new types: cheat sheet, report, case study, and rubric, each source-grounded and built to the same typeset PDF quality as the rest. Need something the presets don't cover? Pick "Anything" and describe the document in your own words — a briefing, a checklist, meeting minutes — and Scholarly builds it to that shape.

How to use it: Open AI PDF Creator from Home or the More menu, add your sources, and choose a document type (or describe your own) in the customize step.

AI File Creator

A new creator that turns your sources into a downloadable file. Describe what you want and it picks the right format — an Excel workbook, a CSV table, a JSON export, a Markdown document, or a calendar file — or start from one of those tiles directly. The existing AI Spreadsheet creator is unchanged and lives as a tile inside the new creator.

AI Creations: Everything Made From a Source, in One Place

Pages, PDFs, videos, AI Meeting Notes, podcasts, research reports, and saved files now have an AI Creations tab listing every creation tool that works for that source. New flashcards, quizzes, podcasts, video lectures, slides, study guides, worksheets, visual documents, essays, and more stay durably connected to the source they came from — including which PDF pages were used — with a Sources tab on the finished creation pointing straight back to the material. Search and filter a source's creations by study tools, media, or documents, and open any result directly. Creation shortcuts moved out of a source's chat tab and into AI Creations, so chat stays focused on questions and explanations.

Preview Office Files Right Where You Work

Word documents, Excel workbooks, and PowerPoint decks now open directly in Scholarly's shared file preview from chat, research, and your saved files — no more bouncing to a converted PDF to see your original formatting. New Word and PowerPoint uploads keep their original file for preview and download while Scholarly still uses a processed PDF for AI understanding behind the scenes, and PowerPoint speaker notes are extracted and kept with the right slide everywhere — chat, video plans, and generated podcasts and videos.

Podcasts Get a Visual Companion, Interactive Questions, and Your Choice of Writer

Every new podcast now includes a visual companion by default: one clean slide per chapter that follows along automatically as you listen (and can be turned off for audio-only). New podcasts also come with interactive questions — a quick check-for-understanding question appears right after the idea it tests finishes, without pausing the audio, and you can revisit any question or track your score across attempts. Podcast creation now includes an AI model picker for the writing (Free defaults to Gemini 2.5 Flash; paid plans default to Gemini 3 Flash Preview and can choose either) — voices and audio generation are unaffected. Every podcast speaker also now uses the exact name of the Grok voice you hear, and Chapters, Transcript, and Interactive Questions each have their own tab so longer episodes stay easy to navigate.

How to use it: Start any AI Podcast as usual — the visual companion and interactive questions come along automatically. Turn either off from the player, and pick your writing model in the customize step on paid plans.

Short-Form and Illustrated Video Styles

AI Video Lectures added two new looks: Short, a roughly 30-second vertical video that distills your source into one tight, illustrated story with word-for-word paper-strip subtitles synced to the narration (works with the sound off), art-directed in one of four styles — cobalt dither, oil painting, papercraft diorama, or sketchbook journal; and Illustrated, a full-length hand-drawn explainer where one character sketches every idea on a clean whiteboard, turning each concept into a simple visual metaphor. Kids & Story joined as the landscape twin of Short. The video player now shapes itself to vertical videos instead of adding black bars.

Mind Maps You Can Actually Read

Mind Maps now render as vector PDFs with a native text layer, so labels stay crisp, searchable, selectable, and accessible at any zoom level instead of turning into blurry images.

A Faster, Smarter Voice Assistant

Scholarly's live voice assistant now runs on xAI's Grok Voice Think Fast 2 — conversations respond faster, follow complex study requests more reliably, and handle interruptions more naturally. Scholarly also added 26 official multilingual voices (21 new, plus five refreshed ones), selectable for AI Video Lectures, AI Podcasts, read-aloud, and live Voice Mode, each with a short description of its tone. Luna, a gentle and patient voice, is the new default for live Voice Mode and read-aloud; for podcasts and videos, leaving voice selection on Auto lets Scholarly pick voices that fit your material.

Custom Designs, Now Free for Everyone

The Premium gate on Custom Designs is gone — every plan can save a reusable look (style instructions plus reference images) and apply it across Slides, Story Books, Infographics, Mind Maps, and AI Videos.

AI Image Playground Gets Quality Tiers

The Image Playground added a Quality selector — Standard or High (2K resolution, a paid feature) — and now shows which AI model produced each result directly on the tile, making it easier to compare models side by side.

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Chat, Home, and Everyday Improvements

• Paste Text is now its own tile on Home and its own tab in Add Content — paste notes or a transcript directly and it becomes a saved source, no file required.
• "Turn this into" chips now appear under a finished chat answer with no other artifact, offering flashcards, a practice quiz, or a study guide in one tap.
• Microphone dictation in the chat box: tap the mic, speak, and your words are transcribed into the input for you to review before sending.
• Chat answers now fade in smoothly as they stream, with citations appearing as clickable source badges while the response is still being written.
• Attaching multiple images in chat now shows a compact grid instead of a tall stack, and attachments sent with your first message stay on that message.
• Custom instructions across Chat, Skills, Custom Designs, and every create flow can now run up to 5,000 characters.
• New models: Gemini 3.6 Flash and Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite across Chat, Research, Slides, Video Lectures, Infographics, Mind Maps, and Flashcards; Claude Sonnet 5 is available for AI Video Lectures on Plus and Premium; Grok 4.5 became the default Auto model for Premium (and higher) chat, with Free chat staying on GPT-5.6 Luna and Study Mode keeping Gemini 3 Flash as its automatic backup.
• The model picker was renamed and simplified to Auto (Premium) and Auto (Free) everywhere, with named models shown as compact single-line rows and four recommended choices highlighted up front.
• Returning to Home from PDFs, videos, flashcards, podcasts, recordings, research, and shared chats now feels instant.
• Folders get inline rename — click the title or pencil icon in the folder header, same as PDFs and flashcard decks.
• A Print option was added to the PDF and Slides viewer menus, alongside the existing download/share options.
• A refreshed Help Center: every article was checked against the current product, with a new guide explaining how the AI Assistant's memory works and how to manage it.

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Mobile

• A brand-new phone-first onboarding flow for new sign-ups: pick what you want to make, then add material by camera, photo, file, or paste — landing straight in the upload flow with your first creation already queued.
• Fixed several screens where the main action button could end up off-screen on a phone, including the post-upload creation chooser, checkout offers, and practice exam setup.
• Long flashcard answers, quiz questions, and session summaries no longer get cut off with no way to scroll to them.
• Plan and competitor comparison tables now stack into readable cards on a phone instead of squeezing into a sideways-scrolling strip.
• The model picker's "Other Models" section now expands in place on phones instead of opening a panel on top of it.
• Interactive podcast questions scroll into view automatically and stay open while you tap around the page.
• Blog posts, file page tabs, search filters, and marketing stats now lay out properly on a phone.

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How to Use the Highlights

Set up Scholarly for Teams

1. Open Teams setup from your profile menu, billing settings, or any plan screen.
2. Create your workspace — you can start with just one seat and add teammates later.
3. Set a shared brand kit and Custom Designs so everyone's creations share a consistent look.

Build any document with AI PDF Creator

1. Open AI PDF Creator from Home or the More menu.
2. Add your sources.
3. Pick a document type — cheat sheet, report, case study, rubric, SOP, flowchart, lesson plan, outline — or choose "Anything" and describe what you need in your own words.

Turn a source into a file

1. Open AI File Creator from Home or the Create menu.
2. Describe what you want, or start from a tile (Excel, CSV, JSON, Markdown, calendar file).
3. Create — your file lands in your library, ready to download.

Find everything made from one source

1. Open any PDF, video, recording, podcast, research report, or page.
2. Click its AI Creations tab.
3. Search or filter by study tools, media, or documents, and jump straight into any result.

Enjoy a podcast's visual companion and questions

1. Create an AI Podcast as usual.
2. Listen — a chapter slide follows along, and a quick question appears after key ideas.
3. Answer to get an explanation grounded in the episode, or turn either feature off from the player.

Pick a voice you like

1. Open Scholarly AI settings to choose a voice for live Voice Mode and read-aloud.
2. Choose a guest voice when creating a podcast, or a narrator when creating a video lecture.
3. Leave it on Auto for podcasts and videos to let Scholarly match a voice to your material.

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Bug Fixes and Reliability

AI Chat

• Fixed chat replies that could fail permanently when one AI model rejected a long conversation — they now move to another model instead of getting stuck.
• Fixed chat occasionally saving a placeholder or generic error as its answer after running out of research steps; a turn that can't reach an answer no longer spends a chat credit.
• Fixed reasoning and tool steps appearing out of order while a longer answer was still streaming.
• Fixed charts created in chat sometimes staying hidden after the assistant said they were ready.
• Fixed the text-selection menu (Ask, Copy, Speak) losing track of your selection after scrolling a long conversation.
• Fixed a crash tied to Claude Sonnet 5's thinking mode that could return a generic error instead of a real reply.

AI Video Lectures

• Fixed chart, equation, and statistic scenes sometimes falling back to placeholder visuals instead of your source's real figures.
• You can now make a video lecture from a short topic (like a single phrase) instead of being turned away for too little material.
• Fixed narration occasionally running out before the picture finished, and videos that could stall for several minutes before recovering.
• Fixed lectures losing narration continuity between chapters, and long scenes that stayed static instead of introducing their point throughout.
• Fixed videos occasionally including raw source markers in the narration instead of natural speech.

Podcasts

• Fixed podcasts failing outright after a temporary hiccup with transcript or voice generation — episodes now recover and keep completed chapter audio instead of restarting from scratch.
• Podcasts are now capped at two hours to keep generation reliable, and near-duplicate chapter content is caught while distinct chapters that share a similar title are preserved.
• Fixed reloading a podcast partway through re-asking questions you'd already answered.

Flashcards, Quizzes, and Documents

• Fixed large or dense sources sometimes producing decks with no practice questions, and study questions disappearing entirely when one card couldn't be prepared.
• Flashcard difficulty settings are now honored all the way through generation instead of silently reverting to the default.
• Fixed AI Flowchart nodes occasionally rendering as solid, unreadable black boxes.
• AI Slides now preserves your source's exact values and units, and avoids clipping wide equations or flattening flowcharts into plain outlines.

Uploads and Sources

• Fixed uploads that could fail outright on a brief storage hiccup — they now retry automatically.
• Fixed scanned and image-based Google Drive PDFs being wrongly rejected, and HTML-based saved web pages failing to generate from.
• Google Drive files you can't download, or that are over your plan's size limit, are now flagged the moment you pick them instead of failing partway through.
• Clearer, source-specific error messages across the board when material genuinely can't be read.

Billing and Plans

• Fixed switching an existing monthly subscription to yearly billing failing with a generic error every time.
• The upgrade dialog now leads with the true monthly-equivalent price for yearly plans and keeps the annual total visible.
• Fixed your active plan sometimes taking a moment to update, or briefly showing the old plan, right after a successful payment.

Everyday Reliability

• Fixed a crash that could blank out a page when a browser was automatically translating Scholarly.
• Fixed a rare sign-out during an otherwise valid session, and a sign-in error on some first-time Google logins.
• Fixed the page editor losing an edit after undo/redo, and read-only shared pages that could briefly become editable.
• Continued light-mode and dark-mode contrast passes across chat, recordings, podcasts, flashcards, and settings.
• Faster loading and smoother scrolling across Home, chat, large PDFs, and the library.

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Looking Forward

July 2026 was the month Scholarly grew up as a platform: Teams launched for organizations, Premium and Laureate gave individuals clearer paths to the AI power they need, and nearly every document and file creator merged into simpler, more capable tools with a home in AI Creations. Podcasts got genuinely more engaging, Mind Maps got genuinely more readable, and the voice assistant got genuinely faster. Expect the AI Creations hub, the unified PDF Creator, and Teams to keep expanding through August.

If you have any questions or feedback, reach out at hello@scholarly.so.