Reddit is leaning into being more like TikTok and Instagram with its latest mobile app update.
In a blog post, the company announced a new update to its mobile app on iOS and Android that brings a redesign and a slew of new features and changes to how you browse and experience content on the app.
The first change that the app is making is to allow users to search within comments on the desktop, iOS, and Android apps. The company actually announced this change on Reddit about a week ago, and it comes as an additional search option after it launched the ability to search comments across the platform.
We’ve been listening to your feedback and you can now search comments within a post on desktop, iOS, and Android apps. So what does this mean? You don’t have to “cmd-f” on the post page anymore and you can search comment threads without expanding them. No more long scrolling sessions — quickly get to the parts of the conversation you’re looking for and jump in where you want.
The company is also introducing News Feeds in which users can choose either the “Read” or “Watch” option. Reddit describes Read as “a way to optimize content for people in a text browsing mood,” while Watch is “an option for video lovers to optimize their feed for video content.”
The Watch option is an interesting addition as it enables a similar video experience to compete with platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Users swipe up to browse content and can upvote, downvote, comment, and share the videos. It’s currently unclear if the videos are strictly generated from the communities that you are in or if videos from additional communities Reddit thinks you may enjoy.
On top of all of that, the mobile app is being updated with a new interface that the company describes as “making it easier for people to find relevant content and contribute to communities faster.” It also teased an “updated web platform to deliver fast and reliable experiences to everyone globally, new updates to our video player to enable redditors to easily engage in conversations while watching, chat enhancements, new storefront updates and more.”
The announcement comes about a month after Reddit was hacked.
