Twitch is finally rolling out its redesigned mobile app but platform users are already begging for the original interface to return.
Last summer Twitch announced its ‘discovery feed’ experiment; a limited update which saw a handful of ‘select’ iOS and Android users helping to ‘train’ the company’s ‘featured video’ algorithm.
At the time, popular and personalized horizontal videos were given the spotlight over vertical clips.
Since then, developers behind the streaming platform have continued to ‘improve’ and tweak the mobile experience.
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On Monday (July 29) the team announced they’d successfully redesigned the app and that it would be launching to all users over the course of the week.
Major updates include users logging onto the app for the first time being met with a feed akin to TikTok and YouTube Shorts.
These live streams are based on personalized recommendations from streamers you already like and communities the business believes you’ll enjoy.
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Moreover, you can now easily swipe to the next item in the feed, preview live streams and join stream chats.
If you want to see who is live from streamers you follow, then you can do so by clicking in the upper left-hand corner.
Moreover, Twitch has announced that from the home tab you can also see clips you may have missed and stories to see what your followed streamers are up to while offline.
The Browse, Activity and Profile tabs have also been given a facelift and a creator + button has been added to navigate to your personal dashboard.
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Twitch claims update comes as they want to ‘make it easier’ for viewers to find content when they visit the mobile app.
“This allows streamers to maintain their connection with their existing community while also finding new viewers through shorter, more frequent interactions,” they wrote.
“The redesigned app makes it easy to find streamers that you already love while also exploring and discovering new streamers.”
Unfortunately the app redesign has disgruntled some users.
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Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, to have their say, one Twitch user typed: “The Twitch App has a whole visual update that might help discoverability but idk if I like it.
“You can scroll through live creators like you can continuously scroll through TikTok and YouTube shorts. Not sure if this new update will go over well. Thoughts?”
A second commented: “Someone explain to me why the Twitch mobile app now suddenly looks like TikTok? It looks so f***ng s**t istg is there any way to go back to what it was?”
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“Time to never update my Twitch mobile app ever again,” remarked another.
A fourth threatened that they were ‘about to uninstall’ the app while someone else defended the developers’ decision to update.
“I actually love the new update,” commented a Reddit user. “I just want to find new streamers to watch on Twitch and I think this new update makes that a lot easier to do. But that's just me.”
Twitch claim that this is just the ‘first step’ towards improving the mobile experience and that they are ‘actively working on addressing more of your feedback’.
UNILAD Tech has contacted a representative of Twitch for further comment.