The Reddit mobile app doesn’t often get big 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 joined at least one new community after using the Discover Tab. Jason Costa, Reddit’s director of product for content and communities, offered the following statement in the blog post:
We’re ushering in a new era of discovery on Reddit, with images and video top of mind. 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 engage with hundreds of thousands of communities around the world.
The Discover Tab is now in the top-level app navigation, replacing the communities and subscriptions tab. Tapping it brings you to a scrollable grid list of Reddit content from a variety of 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 theater or display tech subreddits. On the other hand, if you are subscribed to r/Xbox but don’t visit it much, you might occasionally see content from, say, a Halo subreddit, but not as much as you’d see from a topic you engage with frequently.
Reddit says it won’t use demographic data like age, gender, or location to make decisions about what content to show you in the Discover Tab—it’s purely based on your past Reddit browsing and engagement.
You can also drill down on categories like “technology” or “sports.” And you can give 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 appears in the tab in the future.
There are a number of other changes, too. For example, many of the features from the communities and subscriptions tab can now be found by swiping from the left. From there, you’ll have the option to access functionality on subreddits you moderate, sort and customize your communities, assess the list of Redditors you follow, and of course, go to the r/all entry point.
This is all in the official Reddit app for iOS and Android, of course. There are several third-party Reddit clients, but Costa told The Verge that there are “no plans to expose an API at this time.” The Discover Tab also won’t be available on the web version of Reddit in the immediate future.
The new tab is in the process of rolling out to Reddit’s Android and iOS users now, though not everyone will see the update pop up at the same time.
