The Reddit development team is constantly working on bettering the website, which is why they post updates as to what they’ve been working on every two weeks.
The newest update gives new Reddit users more options during account and avatar creation, improves the video player, and adds a little more to the moderators-only messaging feature.
Reddit Adds More Inclusive Options, Amongst Other Updates
Here’s everything that’s been added to or changed on Reddit from March 17 to March 30, 2021, according to Reddit admin u/BurritoJusticeLeague.
Select Your Gender Identity During Sign-Up
When signing up for a Reddit account, you now have to option to select your gender identity. The Reddit team says that this will help you “find communities and content you enjoy more quickly.”
The options include female, male, non-binary, and a free-form field where you can type a custom option. Alternatively, you can skip the step altogether.
Reddit will not publicly display your gender identity selection. It’s simply used in tandem with the topics you’re interested in to improve the community recommendations you’ll see in your feed.
You can change or remove this information within your account settings at any time.
A Wider Selection of Avatar Gear
All sorts of new gear has dropped for Reddit avatars, including superhero outfits, wheelchairs, and new hairstyles for curly and textured hair (inspired by this post by user u/minakills).
In a similar fashion, Snapchat also added the option to feature avatars in wheelchairs recently.
Video Player Improvements
Over the next few days, a small group of Redditors will be able to test out the following changes made to the Reddit’s video player:
- Watch videos chrome-free (you can remove the video controls and buttons that display over the video)
- You don’t have to tap twice to view comments anymore, they’re now more accessible
- Swipe right on a video to quickly get back to the feed you were in
- Play videos with the same audio controls you set watching your last video
u/BurritoJusticeLeague also confirms that other highly-requested features are in the works, such as GIFs with sound, more video editing tools, and the ability to download videos posted on Reddit.
Modmail Improvements
Modmail is Reddit’s new communication system specifically for moderators of subreddit communities. It’s new features and improvements are as follows:
- Bulk actions (e.g. highlighting, marking as read/unread, archiving multiple messages at once)
- Approving or ignoring join requests from a dedicated folder
- Response indicators (see if another mod has responded to or started to respond to your message)
Help Improve Reddit by Giving Feedback
Reddit has also fixed some bugs exclusive to its respective iOS and Android apps.
You can always give leave your own feedback and other comments on the Reddit experience in subreddits like r/blog, r/ideasfortheadmins, r/modnews, and r/changelog.