Discord is overhauling its Android app in the coming weeks so that new features and updates arrive at the same time as iOS and desktop. If you’re a Discord Android user, you’re probably used to seeing new features not appear for months after they were announced on iOS, and we saw that most recently with the Server Profiles feature being available on iOS way before Android.
“Historically, work on the Android implementation of new features would often be delayed until desktop and iOS were completed, resulting in some features that launched first on one platform before eventually arriving on another one,” explains the Discord product team in a blog post.
Discord is switching to React Native for its Android app, which will allow the company to roll out new features across every platform simultaneously. It also means that the design of Discord on Android will more closely resemble what you’re used to seeing on desktop or even iOS.
React Native is widely used across many popular mobile apps, including Instagram, Microsoft Outlook, Shopify, Tesla, Pinterest, and many more. Discord has been using React Native for its iOS app since it was open sourced by Meta in 2015, allowing the company to build its iOS app from the core of its React app.
The move to React Native on Android will also make Discord features and design more consistent across Android, iOS, and desktop. While the Discord Android app will still keep some specific customizations, things like font sizes will be aligned between Android and iOS.
“Android users will also enjoy the benefits of faster app update release cycles,” explains Discord. “React Native allows us to streamline and consolidate our processes, which helps our engineers work more efficiently and push out updates more frequently, especially now that the team won’t be spending as much time maintaining different codebases for different devices.”
Discord has already started rolling out its updated Android app, so Android users should start to feel the benefit of this underlying codebase change over the coming weeks. And hopefully, it should mean we’ll never see another “coming soon to Android” message for future Discord features.
