Since the Great Purge of Third-Party Reddit Clients of 2023, I’ve been using my browser as my go-to Reddit client. But about a month ago, I finally tried the official Reddit app. From the looks of it, I’ll continue to use it because it offers a ton of features not available on mobile and desktop browsers.

Instant notifications

Now you can enable Reddit’s email notifications, which work pretty well even if you’re not using the official Reddit app. But once you start using the app you can disable Reddit notifications and instead use instant app notifications which are more timely than emails, don’t pollute your email inboxand can notify you of a ton of events that email notifications can’t.

While being bombarded with notifications about every single thing you do on Reddit can be tiring, you can only activate alerts on things that interest you. This is a huge benefit, and the reason I turned off email notifications and switched to app notifications. After disabling most of them, of course.

Faster performance

While my Reddit experience, performance-wise, isn’t that bad when using a desktop browser, the mobile browsing experience leaves a lot to be desired. It’s slow and full of bugs on an image in a stream takes me back to the start of said stream at least once a day.

Opening photos and videos always takes an extra second which adds up over time. Comments also take a second or two to load after tapping a post and loading new posts when scrolling is interrupted quite frequently. The overall Reddit experience on a mobile browser feels paltry at every step.

On the other hand, the official app, although it also has some bugs and quirks, is much better than the Reddit mobile browser experience. It’s super fast, posts open immediately, videos play without a hitch, new posts always load correctly when scrolling and image galleries are so much easier to navigate because of swiping left and right works, unlike browsers where only one in five swipes is recorded.

While I appreciate the other Reddit app-exclusive features listed in this text, faster performance that doesn’t include the aforementioned bug that takes me to the start of the stream, combined with browsing image galleries with the swipe gesture that actually works, was the tip. point that made me definitely switch to the Reddit application.

Add images and GIFs to comments without enabling desktop mode in mobile browsers

You can add images and GIF to your Reddit comments on a mobile browser, but the procedure is very cumbersome. First, you need to switch to the desktop site in your browser settings. Then you have to zoom in on the page because the Reddit desktop site is zoomed in so much on phones by default that it’s unusable. Finally, you can tap on the image or GIF icon in the comment box now that you actually see them, only to find out that tapping them does nothing 9 times out of 10. It’s super frustrating.

However, in the app, if the subreddit allows images in comments, an image icon should be waiting for you in the comment box. Just tap it and add an image to your comment. For GIFs, just tap the comment box and you should see a GIF icon right next to the image. Easy as pie.

Search for comments without enabling desktop mode in mobile browsers

For some reason, the Reddits mobile site does not include the search comments box. You can always comb through the comments by enabling the desktop site, but again, it’s far from optimal since you have to zoom and navigate the clunky desktop interface which isn’t designed for compact phone screens.

The official app, however, has a search icon at the top that dynamically adjusts the search based on where you are. If you’re scrolling down in a feed, tapping the search icon lets you search all Reddit. When you are on a subreddit, tapping the icon switches to subreddit search. Finally, when you open a post, activating the icon will search comments. Clean and smart.

Receive notifications for individual replies

When you use a browser to scroll Reddit, you don’t have the option to be notified of individual replies to a specific comment. The feature is not available on mobile or desktop browsers.

The official Reddit app, on the other hand, includes this feature. Simply tap the three-dot menu on the left side below each comment and select Get Reply Notifications to be notified of every reply to said comment.

Block accounts directly from the comments section

You can block Reddit accounts, even subredditson desktop and mobile browsers, but to do this you need to click on an account you want to block, visit its profile page, then click on the three-dot menu, and only then the account block option will give you is proposed.

In the app, just tap the account or tap the three-dot menu under any comment, and you’ll immediately see the Block Account option.

Adding Users to Custom Feeds

You can create a custom Reddit feed in a browser or in the app. However, adding users to your custom feeds is only available within the app.

Unfortunately, unlike the block option, adding users to your custom feed is not available right after tapping on a username. Instead, you need to tap the View Profile button, tap the three-dot menu button once you land on the profile page, and then add said user to your personalized feed by tapping the Add to button. personalized feed.

More Stream Options (To Watch & Latest)

Reddit offers a lot of different feeds when using a desktop or mobile browser, at least for my taste. There are Home, Popular, and r/all feeds, and you can also choose between a number of different sorting options when scrolling through the r/all feed.

The official Reddit app has even more personalized feeds to choose from.

Besides the streams I just listed, you can also check out the “Watch” and “Latest” streams. The first is sort of a TikTok-like a feed that only displays video posts, with the videos naturally playing automatically. The latter is a collection of new posts from subreddits you follow, which is a sort of home feed, sorted only by new.

Gesture-based feed navigation

When I first opened the official Reddit app and tapped on an image post, I was greeted with an animation showing that I could navigate feeds with gestures. Swiping left and right takes me to the next and previous post respectively, while swiping up brings up the comments section. While cool to look at and use, thanks to vivid animations, the official Reddit app gesture navigation is a bit of a failure.

This is because the feature does not provide a consistent experience. For example, if you tap on an image or video, you will open it and can call up comments by swiping up. However, swiping left doesn’t open the next post in your feed. Instead, it takes you to a different image/video post from the same subreddit, which is weird.

But if you press the space above or below the image/video of an image or video post, the post will open normally, with comments displayed from the start, and a swipe going left and right will take you to the next and previous ones. post to your feed.

It’s not really usable if you ask me. For starters, when I scroll down a feed, I’d like to see posts from that feed and not random posts from a subreddit where the post I tapped was posted. Plus, browsing this way is much slower than just scrolling down a feed, because you have to check every post instead of just scrolling through the ones you’re not interested in.

Achievement badges displayed in comments

Before I started using the official Reddit app, I had no idea that Reddit achievements existed.

As far as I know, you can earn Reddit achievements by being an active member of a subreddit, e.g. posting, commenting, voting, earning rewards. Karma on Redditsetting the user’s style in subreddits that support them, etc.

Once you get your first achievement, you can display it right next to your username and style in your comments. The problem is that you can only see other users’ achievements in the official app. They are not visible on desktop or mobile browsers.

Have you also decided to upgrade to the official Reddit app? Do you know of any other app-exclusive features that I missed listing here? If so, please share them in the comments section and let me know what you think of the in-app Reddit experience. To be honest, it’s not perfect, but compared to reading Reddit in mobile browsers, the app experience is much snappier and significantly less buggy.