Discord Mobile App Update Introduces Dedicated Tabs and Enhanced Features – Here’s How to Use Them
Starting from December 5, the Discord mobile app has undergone a significant overhaul, with the new design already being made available to users. This widely-used messaging and social media platform, primarily catering to the gaming community, is introducing substantial enhancements to specific features, as well as an overall revamp for others. Users have long expressed concerns about the app’s disorganized interface, where various functions were scattered without a convenient means of locating or accessing them promptly. Discord has now tackled this problem with the latest update, and we will delve into the details.
“When we launched the Discord mobile app in 2015, we focused on creating great products for people who play on PC. Mobile works as a companion app when you were away from your keyboard. Now, as more users use Discord on the go, we’re excited to introduce an even faster and more reliable app designed specifically for mobile devices,” said Francesco Polizzi, Product Manager at Discord.
The Discord mobile app is getting a new design
1. Navigation
With this redesign, the focus is on in-app navigation. The Discord mobile app has redesigned the organization of conversations to make the app easier to use. Today’s design update separates servers and messages into separate tabs while retaining the vertical server navigation that Discord users are used to.
When launching the updated mobile experience, users will notice a set of new navigation tabs at the bottom. What was previously hidden behind the slider is now front and center in the app – when you open the app, servers, messages, notifications, and the You tab are available.
2. Messages
All direct messages (DM) and group direct messages (GDM) are now in the Messages tab. Mobile users can see what all their friends are doing right now, whether they’re on an audio channel together, playing a game or Activity, or just listening to something on Spotify. Users can also favorite specific DM or GDM messages in the app, so they always appear at the top of the Messages tab.
The update also improves the GDM experience with a faster and easier way to create a group direct message, and in addition to allowing long replies, users can now quickly swipe to reply to any message sent in the chat.
The update to the Discord app also includes a loaded search function, so users can browse all messages, pins, files and attachments, and pinned messages directly from the search bar. Mobile users no longer need to search for a specific pinned message in each DM separately – one search bar shows through everything.
3. Notices
Whenever something new happens, users can jump to the Notifications tab to keep up with all the @maininnankeros, just like before. In addition to @mentions, all server events, friend request updates and replies to messages are displayed in this tab.
Every announcement is now actionable: tap the @mention and go directly to where it was sent. Has the new friend request been accepted? Users can simply tap on the notification to go directly to DM with them. Server event started? Tap the notification to go to the server where the event is taking place. Additionally, notifications are now automatically cleared as soon as they’re read, saving you time tapping a tab.
4. You tab
The You tab, represented by the user’s profile icon, gives users direct access at any time to see what their profile looks like. By visiting the You tab, users can change their profile and status, upload a new profile icon, access account settings, and find their friends list here. To quickly access the settings, users can also double-tap the You tab icon at the bottom of the screen.
The User Settings page also has a search bar that allows users to jump to a specific setting at any time.
5. Night mode
Discord has introduced a new Midnight theme, which is pure black to save battery, by user request. Everyone is free to take advantage of the new Midnight theme, where chat rooms are completely black backgrounds – great for saving a little battery on smartphones with OLED screens.
6. Media sharing
Improvements to media sharing introduced earlier this year allow mobile users to select and download more images and videos, even high-quality ones (up to 25MB), at once. Media can be viewed in a neatly organized grid, and when multiple images are added to a post, they’re arranged in a gallery-style view instead of being embedded at full size.
7. Faster loading times
Discord announced earlier this year that it had reduced app open time by 55% on Android and 43% on iOS. Now when navigating between channels and chats, the mobile app uses four times less data when loading for the first time and caches the latest messages in the background. Moving between conversations on servers and DMs, the mobile app stores the latest messages from up to 700 text channels and DMs, allowing them to load faster as users navigate their communities.
