Discord unveiled a much-anticipated update on Tuesday with a new goal – to boost communicating and sharing with friends.
The refurbished Discord app will display navigation tabs upon opening, including separate tabs for notifications, messages and servers. As well as a ‘You’ tab which allows users to modify their profile and settings. All of these new functionalities have a noticeable drift from Discord’s desktop version.
Among the new changes is a global DM search tab – allowing you to view all the pins, messages and links through one tab, altogether streamlining your searching time. There has also been a new dark mode for Organic-LEDs (OLEDS) which is aptly named ‘Midnight’.
An improved mobile experience has arrived! This week, we will begin rolling out to all users new mobile updates, including:
✧ Midnight theme
✧ Supercharged search
…and so much more!See all the updates: https://t.co/JFSHzZcRJt pic.twitter.com/OxZyy55L48
— Discord (@discord) December 5, 2023
Given the increasing number of Gen Z and millennial users spending more time on their smartphones as opposed to their desktops, the change is arguably overdue.
Discord’s group product manager Francesco Polizzi wrote a blog post about the much-anticipated update. He wrote:
“Take the Discord you know and love, squish it down to the size of a phone, and take it with you anywhere” — that’s the gist of how the Discord mobile app has worked since its release in 2015.”
“Over time, the amount of *stuff* that Discord can do has grown exponentially. And yet, the mobile app was forced to just shove it all in a tiiiny version of the desktop app. The world has also changed — as more of you spent time using Discord on the go, what was lacking on mobile became more apparent. It was missing standard features that people have come to expect from using other mobile messaging and communication apps and had speed and reliability issues.”
Whats new in the Discord update?
Discord has done some spring cleaning to a lot of the unnecessary tabs. For instance, the revamped app has removed the confusing array of tabs at the bottom and cut it down to just include servers, notifications, messages and your own member tab.
Media sharing has also been rebuffed, meaning it’s snappier and simpler – giving users a 25mb free file upload limit and the introduction of a photo grid to make sharing and viewing photos visually easier. Moreover, the mobile app has also seen an increase in its message capacity, with the ability to save up to 700 messages. This should improve loading time, as Discord claims loading time should be increased by 43% and users can expect fewer crashes.
