Reddit Updates the Technology Behind Its Avatars

By | January 20, 2021

Reddit’s updates for the period from Jan. 6 through 19 were highlighted by sprucing up its avatars and revamping its notifications experience.

The foundational technology behind avatars was updated to make them more scalable and secure and give them better telemetry.

This enables Redditors to do things like change the color of their beard without changing the color of their hair, or hold something in their right hand without canceling out whatever they’re holding in their left hand.

Profile images and avatars, which had already been available for Android and mobile web, were added for desktop, with iOS to follow.

And new fashions and accessories were released to help avatars ring in 2021.

Reddit also began rolling out a new notification inbox, complete with profile and community images, as well as the ability to hide and manage notifications inline.

The platform said it had been rolled out to roughly 5% of users as of Tuesday.

Once Redditors are on the new version, they will be able to control inbox notifications and emails that they receive via Android, desktop, iOS and the mobile web.

Reddit
Reddit

Android and desktop Redditors can now sign up or login to their accounts via magic links sent to their email addresses, giving them access via one click. This feature had already been available for iOS.

Another feature that was already available on iOS and extended to Android, desktop and the mobile web: New Redditors can select more detailed subtopics that they are interested in.

Reddit is also running an A/B test where the best sort on comment threads will prioritize comments with high upvote ratios, with the goal of helping high-quality comments get the attention they deserve.

The award sheet on posts and comments had been different than that on live videos, and Reddit cleaned that up to make all of them the same.

Reddit is running a limited test for the next two weeks, giving logged-out Redditors on the mobile web various offers and rewards if they download the Reddit application for the first time and login. This test will go to 25% of mobile web users.

Redditors who have yet to verify their accounts are being reminded to do so via a dismissible banner on iOS.

Finally, Reddit detailed various bug fixes in its blog post.

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