Reddit Adds Latest Feed, Tweaks Home Feed Sort Controls

Reddit continues to tinker with its feed in an effort to make the platform easier to navigate for novices and veterans alike.

In September, Reddit added a drop-down menu of feeds to its iOS application, including Home, News and Popular, as well as moving its home feed sorting options into the settings menu, and the company said Thursday that those two changes significantly increased how many posts Redditors see in their home feeds.

Looking to continue the momentum, Reddit revealed two more changes that will begin rolling out on iOS Thursday and on Android early next year.

A new Latest feed was added to the drop-down menu, enabling Redditors to view content sorted in chronological order and stay up to date with communities they follow.

Reddit explained in a blog post Thursday, “The Latest feed is the first of a few new feeds we plan to release in the upcoming year. People use Reddit in lots of different ways based on intent at time of use—some prefer in-depth reading, and others want a passive, relaxed watching experience. To cater to these moods, we’re working to make it possible to access feeds based on your browsing mode preference and to prioritize your preferred feeds for an easier feed switching experience.”

The platform is also removing sort controls from its Home feed and defaulting that feed to the Best sort, saying that its research found that more than 99% of Redditors use two sorts on their Home feed, Best and New.

Reddit wrote, “The Home feed is used today as an entry point to discover conversations, communities and creators relevant to you. To make it better, we’re updating and building features that will give you a simpler, more customized in-feed browsing experience.”

The company reminded users that they have the option of tapping the three-dot menu in the top-right corner of recommended posts to tell Reddit to “show more posts like this” or “show less posts like this,” and this option is available on Android, iOS and the web.

Finally, Reddit is experimenting with changing the way certain posts display on the Home, Latest and Popular feeds on Android and IOS, focusing more on the post content and less on elements that most Redditors do not use.

The platform explained, “Starting today, posts displayed in Home, Popular and Latest feeds will not include awards, and the awards action will be in the three-dot menu. These changes will only affect those three feeds, and the posts will look the same on the post detail and community pages.”