Discord overhauls its Android app so you won’t have to wait for new features

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

New features and updates will be available at the same time on both desktop and mobile. When it comes to new features, you are probably used to seeing them not appear for months after they are announced on the App Store.

Some features that launched first on one platform before eventually arriving on another one were caused by delays in the implementation of new features on theAndroid platform.

It will be possible for the company to roll out new features across every platform simultaneously with the switch to react native. It also means that the design of Discord will be similar to what you see on desktop or even mobile devices.

Many popular mobile apps use React Native. Since it was open-sourced by Meta in 2015, the company has been able to build itsiOS app from the core of its React app.

Discord features and design will be more consistent across all devices thanks to the move to React Native onAndroid. TheAndroid app will still have some of the same features as theiOS app.

The benefits of faster app update release cycles will be enjoyed by people on the other side of the world. React Native allows us to streamline and consolidate our processes, which helps our engineers work more efficient and push out updates more frequently, especially now that the team won't be spending as much time maintaining different codebases for different devices."

Over the coming weeks, the benefit of the underlying codebase change will start to be felt by the users of the app. Hopefully, it means we won't see another "coming soon toAndroid" message for future Discord features.