Pressmark helps good writing find readers. It never posts without you. This article explains the controls on the Safety page and the Blocklist.
The control dial#
For each kind of action you choose how much Pressmark does:
- Off: nothing of this kind is suggested.
- Suggest: Pressmark lists items and you act in Substack yourself.
- Guided: Pressmark opens the exact place in Substack and copies the text. You click.
- Send for me: Pressmark sends what you approved, within your daily limits.
Follows, likes, comments and replies, and restacks offer all four. Recommendations and messages stop at Guided: Pressmark never sends those itself. Guided is the default for most kinds.
Send for me has a risk, and the page says it beside the choice. It uses Substack's private interface, not a published one, and Substack's terms forbid auto-responders and automated activity. You take that risk, within the daily limits. Send for me sends nothing until you connect your Substack account, which comes with the Substack sign-in.
Nothing is followed, liked, restacked, commented on or messaged until you approve that item. The dial changes how an approved item happens, not whether you approve it.
During first-run setup the dial is one step. Keeping the defaults is a fine choice.
Edit before sending#
For comments and replies, restack notes and messages, you review the text and can change it before it is used. This is on by default. Likes, follows and restacks without a note can still be accepted in one go.
Links to your own posts#
Replies that only promote you read badly. By default, at most one reply in three links to your own posts. You can change the share on the Safety page, for example to one in five. Engage shows how many of your recent replies linked your posts.
Presets and limits#
Cautious is the default. Standard allows more. Custom starts from Cautious and lets you set each number yourself, inside bounds. If a value is outside its bounds, the page says the allowed range in words and saves nothing until you fix it.
The limits cover reads per hour, drafts, Notes, LinkedIn posts, follows, replies, likes, restacks and messages per day, working hours, the gap between requests, the warm-up for a new or idle account, how long to pause after Substack asks you to slow down or checks your sign-in, and how many errors in a short time pause everything. Where Substack publishes no numbers, the page says so next to the number.
Honest pacing#
Pressmark uses daily caps, working hours and a fixed gap between requests. It never adds random delays and never varies the caps to look human. It is not trying to look like anything.
The warm-up, a lower cap on Pressmark's own sends, starts at your first Substack sign-in. Daily limits reset at midnight in your time zone. Sends keep a fixed gap, and one that comes too soon is refused until the gap has passed, with the time it may go. There are no random delays.
The interface, the scheduler, assistants and access keys all draw on the same limits, so nothing goes faster than you would.
Pause#
One switch on the Safety page pauses all reads, writes and queues. Switch it off to resume. Pressmark also pauses by itself after Substack asks it to slow down, a captcha or a sign-in check. The page says why and until when.
The blocklist#
Open it from the Safety page. The blocklist holds people, publications, keywords and mute words you never want to engage with. Each entry has an optional reason and the date you added it.
- People: a Substack handle, such as @maya-writes.
- Publications: an address, such as example.substack.com.
- Keywords: a word or phrase. Anything that mentions it is never suggested or acted on. Spacing and hyphens do not get round it, and it also matches the address of a post you captured.
- Link hosts: a publication entry also covers links to that address, including in a captured post.
- Mute words: a word or phrase hidden from your feed and suggestions, without blocking anyone. A post that contains one is left out of Engage, and sending checks the list again at the moment it goes.
The blocklist applies everywhere, including assistants and access keys. Adding an entry takes matching suggestions out of Engage at once. Removing an entry brings nothing back by itself.
Import and export#
Export gives you a CSV file with the columns kind, value, reason and added. To import, choose a CSV file with the columns kind, value and reason. The kind is person, publication, keyword or mute. Pressmark tells you how many rows it added and how many it skipped (rows with an unknown kind or an empty value).