Discord's New Desktop UI

[videogamesm12]

Discord is changing the way their app looks on the desktop. Setting the experiment "2024-05_desktop_visual_refresh" to Treatment 1 will enable a new look that aims to more closely resemble the mobile UI redesign that was carelessly shoved down the throats of users earlier last year.



As you can see, it's a fairly drastic change. Other changes not shown or not noticeable in the screenshot above include the ability to resize the left sidebar, two new unfinished work-in-progress dark themes (named "Darker" and "Midnight"), a noticeable increase in profile picture size that is disproportionate to the text size, and the inclusion of the "X is typing..." text in the same box as the textbox where you type your messages. Given the incomplete and unpolished state of the redesign and how recently they started working on this (May 2024 if the experiment string is to be believed), I reckon that this won't be pushed into the mainstream until much later on in the year or maybe even the beginning of next year.

What do you think about it? I personally don't like the direction it's going but I'm interesting to know what others think.

 

[shdwo]

If i'm being entirely honest, this theme looks way better than the current UI. It's also important to note that whatever colour inconsistencies might occur during the experiment aren't likely to follow through into actual release.

 

[videogamesm12]

It's also important to note that whatever colour inconsistencies might occur during the experiment aren't likely to follow through into actual release.

This is to be expected and it doesn't just apply to colors - it seems that some icons are going to be resized as well but currently aren't. I'd like to wait for the redesign to evolve enough before deciding how I feel about it in general because as of right now there are some UI elements that are inconsistent with the new look they're going for and this is very much a work in progress. I do have to admit that I dig the Midnight theme - my biggest gripe with the desktop look has always been a lack of a color scheme equivalent to the AMOLED/Midnight dark theme that has been on the mobile version since like early 2021.

 

[Telesphoreo]

half of the time people just want to change the UI for the sake of change and the devs got bored