twitch

Twitch ‘Discovery Feed’ now rolling out, app redesign also coming

Damien Wilde | May 1 2024 - 5:21 am PT

To compete with services like TikTok, streaming platform Twitch is now rolling out its own “Discovery Feed” on Android and iOS. That’s not all as the an app redesign was also promised for “later this year.”

This new feature is a scrollable feed limited to the Twitch mobile application on Android and iOS. It allows you to see clips and live streams of creators and streamers on the platform to help you find even more new content.

Announced on X (formerly Twitter), the Discovery Feed pulls live streams and clips that meet Twitch’s content guidelines and goes beyond the default “Discover” header section seen on site and mobile. Featured Clips are said to be prioritized over non-featured Clips, with creators encouraged to upload these after streams for better chances of featuring within the Discovery section.

Annoyingly, you can’t instantly join a live stream when tapping it. Instead, you’ll need to tap the streamer’s avatar and enter theater mode to join. Support documents state that no ads will be played within these scrollable snippets, but you may see ads inserted in between content, similar to how YouTube Shorts and TikTok currently insert promotions into similar feeds.

There are two tabs within the feed – a live feed, and a clips feed. Scroll vertically through preroll-free previews of live streams in the feed and tap the streamer’s avatar to enter theater mode and join the live stream. We’re working on making it possible to enter a live stream just by tapping the screen in the near future.

This discovery element is housed in a new “Feed” tab in the Twitch app, which also has a “Live” and “Clips” tab so that you can switch between the two content types and find something that fits your specific mood or gaming preferences. The Discover Feed might be ideal if you want to utilize Twitch on your Android device without committing to spending hours tuning into dedicated live streams.

Twitch also confirmed that a mobile app redesign is coming later this year while explaining how the Discovery Feed will become the new default landing page from May.

The Discovery Feed is available to all, but we’re just getting started. You may see the location and experience of the feed change over time as we continue to experiment with improvements and work towards a redesign of the mobile app later this year.

An “immersive home page” was hinted at, but this change is likely the first step in revamping the mobile application. The Discovery Feed is rolling out right now with the latest Twitch for Android update. You can download this right now from the Google Play Store.