Honestly even with the tiny text, even with having to pan and zoom around the page. The old.reddit experience is superior on mobile to the modern idea how to design of a "mobile app" for a site like reddit.

At least for firefox, there's an old reddit redirect extension that automatically rewrites any reddit urls to old.reddit.

I warmly recommend that one. Except that since the latest firefox mobile release it hasn't yet been ported. But given that it does exist on the desktop version, I guess it's only a matter of time until it reappears for mobile firefox as well.

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...

Github: https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit-redirect

I have a tiny script added to TamperMonkey that redirects every reddit URL old.reddit.com equivalent. Funnily, the redirect ends up loading more comments faster than the redesigned "new" site with 2 comments

A big reason is likely so they can place ads in your feeds while using the app and avoid ad blocking extensions, push notifications, etc.

For mobile usage I use the third party app, Apollo[1], highly recommended.

For desktop I use a couple of third party extensions to improve the experience & normalize the UI, Old Reddit Redirect [2], RES [3]. I then disable subreddit css and enable dark mode. Any subreddit I visit looks exactly the same as any other, it really allows you to focus on reading content.

- https://apolloapp.io/ [1]

- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec... [2]

- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-enhancement... [3]

The compact view is even cleaner. Try adding `.compact` at the end of any reddit url.

Awesome! Thanks for the tip.

Alternatively, you can replace the 'www' with 'i'.

Try out i.reddit.com alternately as it's the old mobile-friendly version.

Fair warning that you still get kicked into the new mobile version when selecting some content links.

Use the app 'Infinity for Reddit'.

Open source and neat design

Their website is fine, but no website works as nice on mobile as a native app does.

I'd argue even their old design is better than a native app.

Loads lightning fast, can load thousands of comments on a page without loading bars or context switch. Don't even care if I have to pan and zoom it still works better than the mobile app.

Starting to feel like the idea of a mobile app being a universally better experience is a software industry mass hallucination. A handful of things apps work way better, modern banking comes to mind but sites styled like reddit and HN are just better in a browser with desktop view and high information density.

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1174/

Honestly being able to zoom anywhere is a feature not a bug.

xkcd's need sarcasm tags now? :)

Speak for yourself.

My eyesight’s not great. If I can’t pan&scan your content (or continuously vary text size to suit my needs in the moment), you wont have me as a user. Very few native apps on mobile work this way, so I don’t use most of them.