Getty Images | Yuriko Nakao
The Reddit mobile app doesn’t often get major updates, but this week was an exception, with the company adding a new “Discover tab” and menus for managing subscriptions.
In a blog post announcing the feature, Reddit says that one in five users has joined at least one new community after using the Discover tab. Jason Costa, Reddit’s product director for content and communities, made the following statement in the blog post:
We are ushering in a new era of discovery on Reddit, where images and video come first. We’re making discovering relevant content and communities more intuitive with the Discover tab. It’s a great new way for people to explore and interact with hundreds of thousands of communities around the world.
The Discover tab is now in the top-level app navigation, replacing the Communities & Subscriptions tab. Tapping it takes you to a scrollable grid list of Reddit content from various subreddits you may not already be following.
Reddit says the Discover tab populates content based on both the subreddits you already follow and how much time you spend in them. So if you spend a lot of time in r/OLED, the tab will likely show content from other home theaters or show tech subreddits. On the other hand, if you’re subscribed to r/Xbox but don’t visit it much, you’ll occasionally see content from, say, a Halo subreddit, but not as much as you’d see from a topic you’re often on.
Reddit says it won’t use demographics like age, gender, or location to make decisions about what content to show in the Discover tab — it’s purely based on your past Reddit browsing and engagement.
You can also dig deeper into categories such as “technology” or “sports.” And you can provide feedback on individual pieces of content with options like “show me more of this content,” “show me less of that content,” or “hide that content,” which will affect what’s on in the future. the tab is displayed.
There are also a number of other changes. For example, many of the features of the Communities and Subscriptions tab can now be found by swiping from the left. From there, you have the option to access functionality on subreddits you manage, sort and customize your communities, rate the list of Redditors you follow, and of course, go to the r/all entry point.
Of course, this is all in the official Reddit app for iOS and Android. There are several third-party Reddit clients, but Costa told The Verge there are “no plans at this time to make an API available”. The Discover tab will also not be available in the web version of Reddit for the foreseeable future.
The new tab is currently rolling out to Reddit’s Android and iOS users, although not everyone will see the update at the same time.