With global rollout starting today, Discord has announced the next evolution of its mobile app. The app has a fresh look and improved experience, with more ways to customise the user experience and new features. More than 150 million people around the world hang out on Discord every month, as per the platform.
Discord has implemented many highly-requested improvements this year, like adding global DM search, simplifying media sharing, reducing app-open time by 43 per cent on iOS and 55 per cent on Android and letting users access more messages when offline. Recent updates include implementing voice messages and a 25 MB free file upload limit on mobile.
“When we launched the Discord mobile app in 2015, our focus was on building great products for people who play games on PC, with mobile serving as a companion app for when you were away from your keyboard. Now, with more users spending time using Discord on the go, we’re excited to roll out a faster, more reliable app than before, designed specifically for mobile,” said Discord group product manager Francesco Polizzi.
Improved navigation
- With customer feedback in mind, Discord has redesigned how chats are organised, to make the app easier to use. Today’s design update separates servers and messages into different 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 of the screen. This would help users get to what is most important: their conversations. Specifically, servers and messages now live in separate tabs.
- What was once hidden behind a sliding motion is now front and centre to the app – the moment the app is opened, servers, messages, notifications and the you tab are accessible.
- The platform will continue iterating on the new servers tab to make the app experience more ergonomic and customisable. There will be continued focus on giving mobile users more visibility into what their server friends are doing so it is easier to join and hang out.
Messages
- All direct messages (DMs) and group direct messages (GDMs) now live in the messages tab. Mobile users can see what all their friends are doing at that moment, whether they are in a voice channel together, playing a game or activity, or just listening to something on Spotify. Users can also favourite specific DMs or GDMs in the app, so they will always appear at the top of the Messages tab.
- The update also improves the GDM experience, with a faster, easier way to create a group direct message and in addition to long-pressing on a message to reply to it, users can now quickly swipe to reply to any message posted in chat.
- The app update includes a supercharged search function, so users can scour through all of their messages, pins, files and attachments, and pinned messages, straight from the Search bar. Mobile users no longer have to search for a particular pinned message in each DM individually — one search bar looks through it all.
- Channel and GDM/DM detail pages have been updated to let users find what they need in the chat faster. Quickly see every member, shared media, links, pins and more from a single location. Find something specific using search, or scroll down the media tab to see past content.
Notifications
- Any time something new happens, users can jump into the notifications tab to stay up to date on all the times they have been @mentioned, just like before. In addition to @mentions, any server events, updates on friend requests and replies to messages will show up in this tab.
- Every notification is now actionable: tap a @mention and go straight to where it was posted. a new friend request accepted? users can simply tap that notification to go directly to a DM with them. Server event started? Tap the notification to jump to the server the event is taking place in.
- Notifications will now auto-clear as soon as they are read to save time on tapping to clear the tab.
You
- Represented by a user’s profile icon, the You tab gives users direct access to see what their profile looks like at any time. By visiting the tab, users can change their profile and status, upload a new profile icon, access account settings and find their friends list right here. To get to settings quickly, users can also double-tap the You tab icon at the bottom of the screen.
- The user settings page also has a search bar, to help users navigate to a particular setting at any time.
Additional updates
- Updated night mode: Discord has introduced a new midnight theme, which is pure black to save battery. Everyone can freely utilise the new midnight theme, where chat spaces will be on fully-black backgrounds — great for saving a little bit of battery on smartphones with OLED screens.
- Better media sharing: With improvements implemented earlier this year to media sharing, mobile users can select even more pictures and videos at once, even the high-quality ones (up to 25 MB) and upload them. Media can be viewed in a neatly organised grid and when adding multiple images to a message, they will be organised in a gallery-style view instead of embedding in their full size.
- Refreshed voice and video: Discord has updated the UI on voice and video calls to make the space more cosy for friends hanging out. Now mobile users can all enjoy a more comfortable virtual call with more intuitive interactions while on the go.
- Faster loading time: Now, when navigating between channels and chats, the mobile app uses four times less data when loading up for the first time and keeps most recent messages cached in the background. When moving between conversations in servers and DMs, the mobile app will store the recent messages of up to 700 text channels and DMs, letting them load quicker as users navigate their communities. Scrolling up and down channels to catch up on the conversation has been updated, with background improvements that let users scroll faster.
Discord will continue to iterate and users will see even more improvements to the mobile app experience in the future which would include:
- Improved search filters
- Quick access to server member lists
- More control over how compact lists and messages appear across the app.
- Additional improvements to the performance and stability of the app so users can spend more time connecting with friends on the go.
