Changelog: Bug fixes & improvements

Scholarly is always improving. Here you can find every bug fix, major feature, and other improvements we've made.

July 17th, 2026

Illustrated video lectures

  • Video Lectures have a new Illustrated design: a full-length, hand-drawn explainer where one quirky character sketches every idea on a clean white board.
  • Each scene turns one idea into a simple visual metaphor — a coin ramp, a growing jar, a balance scale — with its handwritten labels drawn right into the art.
  • Both Illustrated and Short now hold each scene as a clean still with crisp cuts, instead of a slow zoom.

Short videos

  • Video Lectures have a new Short design: a ~30-second vertical (9:16) video that distills your source into one tight, illustrated story.
  • The narration appears on screen word-for-word as paper-strip subtitles, synced to the voice — Shorts work with the sound off.
  • Every Short is art-directed in one of four Scholarly styles — cobalt dither, oil painting, papercraft diorama, or sketchbook journal.
  • The video player now shapes itself to vertical videos instead of adding black bars.

July 16th, 2026

Fixes & improvements

  • Video lectures now automatically retry on a different AI model when a provider has a temporary problem, instead of failing your generation.
  • Video lectures that run past their generation time limit now automatically retry once on a different AI model instead of failing and refunding your credit.
  • Flashcard study questions no longer disappear when the AI skips a card — the deck keeps every question it generated and fills in the rest the next time you open study mode.
  • PDF summary errors now show a clear, friendly message instead of technical error text.

July 14th, 2026

New — choose your voice across Scholarly

  • Scholarly now includes 26 official multilingual Grok voices: 21 new voices plus Ara, Eve, Leo, Rex, and Sal, available for AI Video Lectures, AI Podcasts, read-aloud, and live Voice Mode.
  • Choose the exact voice for live Voice Mode and read-aloud in Scholarly AI settings, pin Maya's guest voice when creating a podcast, or choose the narrator for a video. Each option explains its tone.
  • Luna — a gentle, patient voice — is the new default for live Voice Mode and read-aloud. For podcasts and videos, leave voice selection on Auto and Scholarly will choose voices that fit your material.
  • Voice Mode now handles reconnects and interruptions more reliably, without overlapping old audio or losing a turn that still needs to be saved.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed a crash that could close the page while an AI answer was streaming. Answers that mixed a plain “*” with a math formula — like “5 * 3” next to \times — could take down chat, PDF, and flashcard pages mid-response. They now render correctly.

July 12th, 2026

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed a rare error that could stop the Home page from loading for some workspace members.
  • Keyboard shortcuts (including ⌘/Ctrl + K search) no longer occasionally error on Safari when a password manager or browser autofill fills in a field.

July 11th, 2026

Bug Fixes

  • Copying a share link now works reliably on Safari and iPhone/iPad — tapping “Copy share link” no longer fails with “Couldn't copy the link.”
  • Flashcard generation no longer dead-ends with “try different files” when the AI returns a response our checker can't read — we now automatically retry on a second model instead of failing the whole deck.

July 9th, 2026

Improvements

  • Sidebar layout refreshed: Home, Chat, and Recently Deleted sit at the top; a primary New button and search sit below; Content / Chats tabs filter Recent, Folders, and chats. Recent and Pinned now use the same type-colored rows as Home, and dark-mode sidebar text is easier to read.

July 8th, 2026

Bug Fixes

  • AI Video Lectures that stall while planning now show a clearer message and retry on a stronger model instead of failing as a vague “technical issue.”
  • Flashcard creation no longer dead-ends after a brief AI hiccup with “try different files” — we now retry automatically when the model returns an incomplete or unreadable response.
  • Fixed sign-up occasionally crashing when finishing the last registration step after Google sign-in.

Improvements

  • Grok 4.5 from xAI is now available (replacing Grok 4.3) across chat and create tools. On paid plans it is the default model for AI Video Lectures, AI Slides, Infographics, Flashcards, and Research (free stays on DeepSeek). Generation runs at medium reasoning depth. Previous Grok 4.3 selections continue to work via automatic upgrade.
  • Refined the yearly Ultimate savings banner on Home so the discount and switch-to-yearly offer are easier to scan.
  • Tightened spacing on the Create-with-AI option grid so longer titles like “AI Video Lecture” fit without being cut off.
  • Removed the rotating study tips from creation loading screens — just the status and progress now.
  • Fixed design/style option cards in create modals flashing a light white hover in dark mode.
  • Simplified the create-modal “close while generating” button to a clear Close action (no more “continue studying” wording).
  • The “More credits” model badge (e.g. on Claude Sonnet 5) now only appears for team/enterprise accounts that use weekly credits — not on individual plans.
  • Grok 4.5 in AI Chat always uses thinking (no Instant / off mode) — matching what the model supports, so chats no longer fail when thinking was turned off.
  • Fixed a chat bug where your message could disappear after a failed reply even though it was saved — the original text stays visible for retry.

July 7th, 2026

Bug Fixes

  • AI video lectures now work from photos and scanned documents. Previously, creating a video from an image or an image-only PDF could fail with an unhelpful message telling you to pick a different model — now we automatically read your images and build the video.
  • Fixed AI Flowcharts where the steps could render as solid black boxes that hid their labels — every step now shows as a clean, readable box with its text clearly visible.

Improvements

  • Cleaned up the sidebar. A prominent New button and search sit at the top, with Content and Chats sections for browsing your library, folders, and recent chats.

July 6th, 2026

Bug Fixes

  • Flashcards no longer fail on a brief AI hiccup — if the model returns an empty response, we now retry automatically (and fall back to a backup model) instead of failing your deck and using up a creation.
  • Fixed a rare issue where creating flashcards could fail with an error or get stuck partway — even when your cards had already been generated. Flashcard creation now reliably saves your finished deck.
  • Clearer message when an AI video lecture source has too little text — instead of wrongly suggesting your file is scanned or telling you to “run OCR,” we now simply say the source is too short and to add more detail.

Improvements

  • Tidied mobile sign-up/login forms and fixed a rare Google sign-up crash.

July 5th, 2026

A cleaner AI Meeting Notes page

  • A slimmer, more elegant player — the bulky playback panel is now a single, compact bar, so your transcript, summary, and tasks get more room and the whole page feels calmer.
  • Easier to read — refreshed the layout with more breathing room around your transcript, summary, and action items.

Improvements

  • Chat now quietly rides out brief hiccups from the AI provider — if a response can’t start because the model is momentarily overloaded, we retry automatically instead of showing an error.
  • Signup starts you in the free workspace — the final “How will you use Scholarly?” step now always pre-selects the free “Just me” option, so tapping Continue takes individuals straight into their personal study space. The paid Teams option stays one tap away, just never pre-picked.
  • Share entire folders — folders can now be shared just like any other item. Recipients get a read-only view of everything inside, and folders shared with “Your team” show up in your team’s shared library automatically.

Bug Fixes

  • Clearer messages when flashcards can’t be created — if you paste a short topic or upload a photo with no lesson content, we now explain what to do for that kind of input instead of showing PDF-only advice about “pages” and “Print to PDF.”

July 4th, 2026

Introducing Scholarly for Teams

  • One workspace for your whole group — put a class, department, research lab, school, or company on a single plan. Every paid feature turns on automatically for every member, and everyone works from your shared material.
  • The most capable AI models — teams unlock our top tier of models across every AI feature, with admin controls to choose which model tiers the team can use.
  • Weekly AI credits per member — each person gets their own weekly credits, never a shared pool, so one teammate’s heavy week never eats into anyone else’s.
  • Admin controls in one place — invite by email or link, Member and Admin roles, shared source libraries, and one central bill. See Scholarly for Teams to start a team.

AI Image Playground upgrades

  • High-quality mode — a new Quality selector lets paid plans generate sharper 2K images on models that support it, and shows exactly which models will use it.
  • See which model is generating — while images render (and if one fails), each tile now shows the model producing it, so comparing models side by side is much easier.
  • Removed the Style menu — describe the look you want directly in your prompt instead.
  • Deleting an image now asks for confirmation first.
  • Fixed the remaining-generations counter showing “Infinity free left” on unlimited plans.

AI now reads your PDF pages the way you see them

  • Generations grounded in the actual pages — when building slides, study guides, worksheets, videos, and other content from a PDF, the AI now reads the relevant pages as full page images by default, so diagrams, equations, tables, and handwriting are read exactly as they appear instead of relying on extracted text that can drop or garble them.
  • Infographics and mind maps see your pages too — they now look at your PDF’s actual pages when planning, so visual material like charts and diagrams makes it into the result.

A cleaner, more consistent look across the app

  • Light mode got a big polish pass — hundreds of panels, cards, and labels across chat, recordings, podcasts, flashcards, settings, and more now have proper contrast, so nothing looks washed out or blends into the page.
  • Dark mode fixes everywhere — missing dark styles on hover states, cards, and text were filled in across the app, and equations in the page editor no longer render as white strips in dark mode.

Improvements

  • Print your PDFs and slides — the three-dots menu on PDF and slide viewers now has a Print option that opens your browser’s print dialog with the document ready to go.
  • Pasting a link no longer uses up your free file upload — links you add as sources are treated as sources, not file uploads, so your lifetime upload credit stays available for real files.
  • Added a Skip option to the welcome tour so you can jump straight into the app.

Bug Fixes

  • Quiz and exam questions now test understanding, not diagram trivia — questions built from your material no longer ask you to recall an exact value or timing read off a source’s illustrative graph (like “at what time does the curve peak?”). They now focus on the mechanism and relationships the figure is showing.
  • Fixed upgrading being blocked for some users — clicking an upgrade button could show “An error occurred while creating the checkout session” instead of opening the checkout page. Checkout now opens reliably, and we’ve added extra safeguards so this class of problem can’t block a purchase again.
  • Fixed Home and All Content sometimes reloading more of your library than needed when switching views or filters, so large libraries stay faster and smoother.
  • Fixed the welcome guide overstating how many free AI creations some accounts include — it now always matches your actual allowance.
  • Fixed pacing markers like “[slow]” occasionally appearing in AI video lecture transcripts.
  • Clearer help when a PDF is really just a printed document-viewer page — if you upload a “Print to PDF” of an online document viewer (SharePoint, OneDrive, or Google Docs) that was saved before the document finished loading, the file only contains the page’s web address and a page number, not the actual document. We now spot this instantly and point you to download the original file — across flashcards, quizzes, podcasts, slides, and AI videos — instead of trying for a while and then showing a confusing error.
  • The Print button on the Formula Sheet Generator now works everywhere — it reliably prints just your formula sheet (not the whole page), and if your browser blocks the print window it downloads the sheet for you instead of showing an error. This fixes it on iPad and iOS, where printing used to dead-end.
  • Fixed the billing and connections pages showing a bright white background for dark-mode users.
  • Fixed chart labels in flashcard statistics being nearly unreadable in dark mode.
  • Fixed several menus and drawers feeling sluggish when opening — they now respond instantly.
  • Fixed the “last viewed” time on shared content showing an older visit instead of the most recent one.

July 3rd, 2026

Custom Designs are now free for everyone

  • Save your own look and reuse it — on any plan — create a custom design (your style instructions plus reference images) and apply it when generating Slides, Story Books, Infographics, Mindmaps, and AI Videos. It used to be a premium-only feature; now everyone can build and use them.

Improvements

  • Your most-used dialogs now open instantly — Upload Content, flashcard and quiz creation, the welcome tour, and the plans dialog no longer pause for a moment the first time you open them.
  • Your folder’s name now shows on your phone — opening a folder on mobile now displays its name at the top, so you always know which folder you’re working in.
  • Deleting a custom design now asks you to confirm — removing a saved design used to happen on a single tap, which was easy to trigger by accident. We now show a quick confirmation first, so you won’t lose a saved look and its reference images by mistake.

Bug Fixes

  • You can now remove reference images in Custom Designs on your phone — the remove (×) button on a reference image was only visible on hover, so it couldn’t be tapped on a touchscreen. It’s now always visible on mobile, and the Save / Back buttons stack neatly instead of crowding one line.
  • Saved web pages now work as study material — if you add a saved web page (for example a Google Drive or Google Docs viewer page) as a source, we now pull out its readable text automatically instead of failing. When a page is really just a sign-in or viewer shell with no content, we tell you right away to download the actual file — instead of trying and failing a minute later.

July 2nd, 2026

Voice Input in Chat

  • Speak your message instead of typing it — there’s a new microphone button next to Send in AI Chat. Tap it and the input turns into a live recorder with a waveform that moves as you talk; tap stop and your words are transcribed straight into the message box, ready to edit or send.

Improvements

  • A proper welcome on your phone — new sign-ups on mobile now get a quick, phone-friendly setup: pick what you want to make (flashcards, an AI video lecture, a quiz, or a study guide), then snap a photo of your notes, choose a file, or paste text — and Scholarly starts building it right away. Previously, phones skipped the welcome tour entirely.

Help Center

  • A full refresh of every help guide — all 58 articles were checked against the current product, and 37 were updated so what you read matches what you see: the new model picker, PDF page selection in every create flow, typeset document themes, AI Meeting Notes, Deep Research file deliverables, and current video modes and lengths.
  • Four new guides: Paste Text (turn pasted notes into study material), Studying from YouTube Videos, Deleting & Restoring Content, and Account, Login & Password Recovery.
  • Removed outdated information across help and product pages — including references to a free trial that no longer exists and features that have been retired.

Bug Fixes

  • Scanned PDFs from Google Drive now work for flashcards — a scanned or image-only PDF picked from Google Drive used to fail with a “blank or unreadable” error even when it was full of content. We now read its pages as images (the same way uploaded scans already work), so it generates cards normally.
  • Clearer messages when a source can’t be read — if your Google Drive connection has expired you’re now told to reconnect it (instead of a generic “try again”), and empty files or not-yet-transcribed videos now explain exactly what to fix — across AI video lectures, slides, study guides, infographics, and podcasts. These cases also stop retrying pointlessly and refund your credit right away.
  • YouTube videos no longer fail with a “no transcript” error when building an AI Video Lecture or Podcast — some videos (most often long ones) could report no transcript even though captions were available. Scholarly now recovers the transcript automatically, so generation just works without needing to open the video first.
  • Fixed the billing link in payment and renewal emails — the “billing settings” link in the payment-failed and yearly-renewal emails pointed to a page that didn’t exist. It now takes you straight to your billing settings.

July 1st, 2026

Improvements

  • Paste Text is now a first-class way to add study material — a new Paste Text option on Home and a Paste text tab in the Add content dialog turn your pasted notes, lecture transcripts, or articles into a saved source you can study from, no file needed.
  • Made it clearer that YouTube links are supported: the Upload Content tile now says so, and the Add content dialog highlights YouTube in its link section.
  • Moved Study Guide to the front of the Home create row.
  • Tidied up the Home page create options: the newest AI agents — AI Timeline, AI SOP, AI Flowchart, AI Lesson Plan, and AI Outline — now live under the More menu along with the AI Image Playground, keeping the main row focused while every tool stays one click away.
  • Added a quick Folder shortcut and surfaced AI Chat in the Home create options, and moved Practice Exam into the More menu.
  • Gave the Add content dialog more comfortable side spacing on mobile, so content no longer hugs the screen edges.
  • Folders can now be renamed from the folder page — click the folder’s name (or the pencil icon next to it) in the header to edit it in place, just like renaming a PDF or flashcard deck. You can also generate a title with AI while editing.
  • Redesigned the chat model picker: a focused Recommended Models list up top, with everything else tucked into a dedicated Other Models menu instead of expanding the same list — plus a full-color Gemini logo.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed AI Video Lectures coming back in English when your source material was in another language — with language set to Auto, the video now matches your source’s language (Spanish notes make a Spanish video). Picking a specific language still works as before.
  • AI Video Lectures now make fuller use of their runtime on dense sources instead of over-compressing, stay closer to your material (no invented facts), and preserve your own script’s wording when you provide one in the instructions.
  • Fixed the Custom Designs editor’s create button staying silently disabled — it now tells you what’s missing, and the design picker shows upfront that custom designs are a Premium feature.
  • Flashcards now work with scanned or photographed PDFs from Google Drive. If a PDF has no selectable text, Scholarly reads its pages as images instead of stopping — so a scanned textbook still turns into a full deck.
  • Fixed chat citations sometimes showing as raw source codes instead of clickable source badges — source links now render correctly on every chat model.
  • Citations now appear as clickable source badges while the answer is still streaming — previously they showed as raw citation text until the response finished.
  • Fixed AI Video Lecture captions appearing as huge paragraph blocks instead of readable subtitle lines.
  • Fixed the Build Flashcards button appearing off-center in the practice exam “What would you like to study?” empty state.
  • Fixed the model picker in chat not showing a hover highlight in dark mode.
  • Fixed Claude Sonnet 5 erroring out when Thinking was turned on in chat — it now thinks and answers normally.
  • A model’s thinking summary now appears above its answer instead of below it.