The design language follows all modern social media apps: engagement. Think TikTok. This means auto-playing videos, large elements instead of small elements (low information density) designed to draw attention, prioritising popular and contentious items in the feed instead of relevant items for the user, etc. This language is user-hostile. It uses psychological techniques to keep users on the platform for longer instead of presenting the information which they actually want.
There are technical issues too. Many users report issues playing videos and gifs.
> You can fix both these issues in the app settings. Turning off feed thumbnails is also a big improvement.
You cannot. The "classic" layout is still less information dense than Apollo, and disabling autoplay only disables autoplaying videos in the "card" layout. Videos still auto-play once a user taps a submission.
While we're here, I forgot how hostile their navigation menu is. At the bottom of the app Reddit has "Home," "Discover," "Create," "Chat," and "Inbox." The latter doesn't even take one to their inbox. It takes them to their *activity." These are clearly not the most used actions on Reddit. They're the actions Reddit wants to encourage.
The UI is absolutely awful. As just one example, if I want to view the karma count on a recent comment, in the official app I have to tap my user profile icon in the corner, tap "my profile" (didn't I just tap my profile icon?!), then tap "comments". So now to go back where I was I have to back swipe three times. If I'm in a comment thread and I tap on a user's name, a profile card slides up from the bottom of the screen. If I then want to view that users comment history, I have to tap on their username from the slide up card, and that brings me to the full user profile card, and then I have to tap on the comments tab for that user. To go back to the comment thread, I have to press the back arrow to leave their profile, then press the (x) button on the slide-up profile card - so I back swipe and then down-swipe/tap a button.
It's an absolutely insane and frustrating UX. Things slide in from different directions and there are multiple UI elements with similar (but not identical) functionality. That's on top of crap like not being able to download gifs and videos right to my device and the built in video player being broken. There are so many other major social media apps that do things so much better it just boggles my mind at how bad reddit's is. TikTok is so smooth and easy to use, even Facebook is better.
In Apollo on the other hand, I view my comments by tapping the "profile" button at the bottom of the screen. In a comment thread, to view a user's history, tap their name and their history pops up. It's smooth and intuitive and fast and simple. I always "go back" views by sliding from the left - the interactions never change depending on context so I always know exactly how to navigate intuitively.
Everything, similar to how crappy the new (now old) god awful and broken design. It’s not meant for users, but for advertisers. From abominable amount of tracking, to recommended community posts, to unnecessary avatars, to taking multiple clicks to view something, and on and on and on…
The reason why I dislike it is that, compared to 3rd party apps, it's slow and the design is overly busy. I prefer a more minimalistic design. The excessive tracking doesn't help.
There are technical issues too. Many users report issues playing videos and gifs.
Finally, the Reddit app serves ads.