Reddit Now Is A Great Android Reddit App With Gesture-Based Holo UI
The insanely popular social news and Q&A website, Reddit, boasts a huge number of users from virtually all corners of the world. With most Redditors now preferring to access their favorite site from their mobile devices, it is only fitting to see a huge variety of quality Reddit clients popping up like mushrooms across all major mobile platforms, and Android is no exception. Going by the feature list of some of the best Reddit Android apps available in the Play Store, you can see how each alternative brings something uniquely to the table in addition to core Reddit features, to cater to the needs of a specific niches. Today, we have the latest entrant in that list in the form of Reddit Now that introduces a fresh blend of gesture-based navigation to enhance your Reddit experience on Android. Currently in beta and a tad limited in features, Reddit Now might not be yet ready to be cited as a full-fledged Reddit client, but it certainly impresses with whatever basic and new features it does support, the best of which remains its multi-pane UI. Details to follow.
Optimized for Android smartphones and tablets, Reddit Now makes impressive use of Holo UI with all its multiple tabs, menu overflow buttons, dedicated sidebars, action bars and other UI elements. The app’s main interface is split into three different panes, each accessible via sideways swipes. The left pane lists all the featured and subscribed Subreddits, each presented under its respective column. Needless to say, you must be logged in to the app with your Reddit account in order to access your personal and subscribed Subreddits. If you’re fresh to the network, you can grab yourself a fresh account using the in-app registration feature.
Using this pane, you can view and rearrange your Subreddits on the list, manually update the app’s content, subscribe to new items, and browse posts under any Subreddit. Tapping a post automatically navigates you to the second pane that displays the entire content of the post, complete with embedded photos, URLs and other relevant material. To filter Subreddit content by various Reddit-specific categories i.e. Hot, New, Controversial, Top, Best & Old etc., you can use the button with three horizontal bars at the top.
To view comments on a post or make your own comment, tap the bar at the bottom that displays the total number of up/down votes for the post. Long-pressing a specific comment provides you with the option to up/down vote it, reply to it, or jump to that user’s profile screen. For each member, you are able to see their respective profile overview, comments made by them, posts submitted by them, their claimed trophies and other activities on the network. The third and final pane can be accessed to view details about the current Subreddit including brief info, spoiler code, rules and other important guidelines regarding posting content.
Multiple content panes and gestures is not all Reddit Now’s got; here’s a summary of the app’s other main features:
- Inline image previews, along with comment counter and main source of the post.
- Detailed profile support.
- Option to view posts in browser.
- Color-coded comment threads.
- Option to save, hide and share posts.
- Subscribing to and ubsubscribing from Subreddits.
- Option to specify your preferred initial comment count display (25 by default)
- Filtering out Not Safe For Work (NSFW) posts
- Preview Flair (user-specific avatar) alongside comments
- Multi-touch gestures for photo zooming
Since the app is currently in beta, we won’t yet be comparing it with some of the other feature-laden Reddit Android apps available out there; still, we’d love to see the developer add some basic features to the package. These include a widget for the Android home screen (and possibly, lockscreen as well), native search tool, option to choose between light and dark theme, and basic profile management.
Reddit Now is currently compatible with Android 3.2 Honeycomb or higher devices only. Hit the Play Store link provided below to download the app to your Android device.
Download Reddit Now For Android
