Reddit isn’t difficult to use, and you don’t even need an account to browse everything the Home Page has to offer. Recent and popular posts are just a click away from the homepage, and you can use the search box at the top to find posts on almost any topic imaginable.
However, if you only focus on the basic features Reddit has to offer, you’re missing out on the full experience, and there are plenty of ways to customize your time on Reddit so that you get more of the good stuff you want. Learn about it faster. Even if you’ve been using Reddit for a while, you might not have come across all of these features.
- Browse by topic
© Dive into the list of topics to see Reddit in another way. David Nield/Gizmodo
In addition to browsing the subreddit and using the search function, Reddit also has a master list of topics that you can click through. This is another way to find information about a specific person, movie, book, or anything that interests you.
Moderators maintain topics, so it’s not the most comprehensive or well-maintained system. Still, it can lead to noteworthy posts in multiple Reddit subreddits, or give you some inspiration when you don’t know what to read next.
- Set up custom feeds
Custom feeds enable you to combine multiple subreddits into a chronological post feed. They are useful for keeping up with topics or interests in multiple communities, and you don’t need to join the subreddits included in the feed.
You’ll find this feature in the left navigation pane on the left: click Create a custom feed, give it a name, and start adding subreddits. You can choose to keep your feed only to yourself, or make it public to allow other users to follow it.
- Looking for Reddit
One of the best subreddits is Discover Reddit, describes itself as “Reddit’s signpost.” When you can’t find the right place, ask the friendly community. As of this writing, people are asking questions on Reddit about choosing phone apps, creating exercise plans, weird food combinations, and lost friendships. If you’re an experienced Reddit user, you can help others find subreddits that might fit their needs.
- Use search operators
The search box generally works fine, but you can use operators to search more specifically on Google. Put terms in quotes to get exact matches from Reddit, and use the AND and OR operators if you need to combine different searches.
You can also add “site:” followed by the URL to your search to get posts mentioning that specific site, or “title:” followed by text to search for just the post title. The operators “self: yes” and “self: no” can be used to find whether posts were posted by you.
- Improvement notification
Reddit has a very sophisticated notification system out of the box. Still, you can fine-tune the content of the alerts you receive by clicking on your profile picture (top right corner), including private messages, likes and mentions on posts, and then settings and notify.
Also worth a look is the Chrome (and Edge) extension called Reddit post notifier. It expands the scope of where you can get notifications, including specific subreddits, searches you run on Reddit, and specific users. You can also use the built-in filtering options.
- Open post in new tab
©Posts can automatically open in a new tab. David Nield
We’re all used to having links open in new tabs in the background while continuing to read what’s in front of us, but that’s not the default way links work on Reddit, so you can quickly lose track of where you are unless you specifically open a link in a new tab on Reddit. Open each post in a tab.
You can adjust this from the Reddit preferences panel, which means you don’t have to remember to open posts in a new tab every time: click on your profile picture (top right), then settings and priority turn up Open post in new tab Toggle Switches.
