Reddit for Android version 3.21 adds interactive post previews in Chat

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There are a number of popular Reddit applications available for Android in the Google Play Store. This was originally a necessity as the social media company had not released their own official app for many years, but that changed about three years ago with the release of the official app on iOS and Android. Since the app was officially released, it has undergone a number of changes. From UI redesigns to UX tweaks, the developers are trying to make it more interactive for the end user. The latest update adds a number of changes but the biggest one makes preview images smaller in chat while adding in some actionable features.

We noticed this change in version 3.21 of the Reddit for Android application which was strange because the posts that were shared in chat already gave you a preview of it. As you can see from the image above, the screenshot on the left is the older version of the Reddit application while the screenshot on the right is from the latest update. Before, when you shared a post from a subreddit it would be embedded in the chat and if it were an image it would be big enough to get a decent view of it without even tapping the link.

This was a two-fold issue as it lets you see the image that was shared but it requires the user to tap the link to take any actions upon the post. With the new update to the application, we can see from the right screenshot that the preview image is much, much smaller but we are given actionable buttons along with it. So directly from the chat, we are able to upvote or downvote the post while also being able to easily share it with someone else. I can see this being quite the divisive change, depending on what people tend to share in Reddit’s chat messages.

Reddit v3.21 Changelog: