Midjourney patches folders and upscale in alpha site two weeks after redesign

The starting point was the redesign draft of alpha.midjourney.com released in early August. Midjourney described it as a "very rough draft" and opened it to community testing, during which thousands of users tried it out and left hundreds of pieces of feedback. According to domestic reports, Midjourney had also used the same alpha site back in March to first unveil its next-generation model V8, improving image generation speed and text rendering at the time. This latest overhaul is work on the interface of that alpha site itself, so the focus is on the screen and usability rather than model performance.

Folders for organization, and previously unresponsive buttons brought back to life

The most noticeable change is the sidebar organization feature. Users can now group projects into a collapsible tree structure and rename groups instantly by double-clicking. Recently used folders now appear at the top, along with a "Show All" toggle and a New Project button, and on larger monitors the navigation panel stays open continuously.

The previously unresponsive upscale, zoom, and vary buttons have also been restored. In particular, the vary function had an issue where it silently ran at HD quality regardless of user settings, but it now follows the specified settings correctly. The upscale button has also been reattached to images previously created with V8.2.

The settings screen has been fixed as well. Issues where values would reset on their own and Relax mode would arbitrarily switch to Fast have been resolved, and the personalization toggle now actually applies when turned off. On the performance side, typing delays when entering prompts, slow response from settings sliders, and slowdowns after scrolling deep into the gallery have all been fixed.

Item	Previous State	This Update
Folder organization	No feature	Sidebar group tree, rename by double-click
Vary	Forced HD regardless of settings	Follows user settings
Settings values	Auto-reset	Values retained
Input responsiveness	Typing/slider delays	Delays resolved
Explore	V8.2 images not shown	Shown in Top Week, Top Month, and search

Several areas around the prompt input box have also been touched up. Removing a version pin now automatically switches the model, and submitting a prompt now clears only the text while pins and image references remain in place for the next run. Bugs where multiple random sref pins would merge into one, prompt pasting would break, and the same prompt would get submitted twice have also been fixed.

How to try it

Where to start — Log in at alpha.midjourney.com to see the revamped sidebar immediately. It appears accessible with an existing alpha tester account, with no separate application process required.

Step-by-step usage

1. Log in to alpha.midjourney.com.
2. Check the folder tree in the left sidebar, and double-click to rename a group.
3. Click "New Project" to create a project and add it as a file to the desired folder.
4. Test the upscale, zoom, and vary buttons on existing images to confirm they work properly.
5. Adjust Relax/Fast and personalization values in the settings menu — this time the values should stay in place.
6. In the gallery, use the newly added toggle-chip filters to sort through results.

Who can use it — This is currently aimed at accounts testing on alpha.midjourney.com, with feedback to be submitted through the community channel #alpha-ideas-and-bugs.

What you can try — For example, you can organize your work into folders by client or project, or copy the code from a moodboard pin to reuse in other prompts, managing your workflow this way.

Editor's take

What stands out in this changelog is not the list of new features but the length of the fix list. New features like folder organization and group trees take up only a few lines, while the bug fixes number over twenty. This suggests the alpha release was never designed as a procedure for handing over a finished product with fanfare, but rather one for putting a rough draft in the hands of real users to find what's broken. Issues like an unresponsive upscale button or settings resetting on their own would look like unacceptable defects in a finished release, but at the alpha stage, quickly surfacing exactly these kinds of defects is the point.

There's a clear practical takeaway here. Rather than waiting for a stable release when adopting a new tool, joining alpha or beta channels early and leaving feedback increases the odds that features will be refined in directions that suit your team's workflow. Indeed, items like the folder organization feature and the pin right-click menu in this update appear to be direct results of community feedback.

That said, the company itself acknowledged that "fixing this much this fast probably created some new bugs," so there's still a chance of encountering unexpected errors on alpha.midjourney.com for the time being. Frequent patches like this one are likely to continue over the coming weeks, and whether the site transitions to a full official release will likely depend on how stabilization progresses.