Reddit isn’t difficult to use, and you don’t even need an account to browse through everything ‘the front page of the internet’ has to offer. Recent and popular posts are just a click away from the main homepage, and you can use the search box at the top to look for posts on almost every topic imaginable.
However, if you’re sticking to the basics of what Reddit has to offer, you’re missing out on the full experience—and there are quite a few ways to tailor your time on Reddit so you get more of the good stuff that you’re interested in, and get to it faster. Even if you’ve been using Reddit for a while, you may not have come across all of these features.
- Browse by topic
© Dive into the topics list for an alternative look at Reddit. David Nield / Gizmodo
In addition to browsing through subreddits and using the search function, Reddit has a master list of topics you can click through. It’s an alternative way of finding information about specific people, movies, books, or whatever interests you.
Moderators maintain topics, so it’s not the most comprehensive or well-maintained system. Still, it can turn up notable posts across multiple subreddits—or give you some inspiration if you’re stuck for ideas about what to read next.
- Set up custom feeds
Custom feeds enable you to combine several subreddits into one chronological feed of posts, and they can be really useful for keeping up with a topic or interest across several communities—and you don’t need to join the subreddits you include in your feed, either.
You’ll find the feature in the left-hand navigation pane on the left: Click Create a custom feed, give it a name, and then start adding subreddits. You can opt to keep your feed private just for you or make it public to allow other users to follow it.
- Find a Reddit
One of the best subreddits is Find a Reddit, which describes itself as “the signpost of Reddit.” When you’re not finding the right places, ask the friendly community. At the time of writing, people are asking Reddit about choosing phone apps, making exercise plans, weird food combinations, and losing friendships. If you’re a Reddit veteran, you can help out others by pointing them toward subreddits that might fit their requests.
- Use search operators
The search box usually works fine, but you can use operators to be more specific 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:” to a search followed by a URL to get posts that mention that particular site, or “title:” and then your text to just search post titles. The operators “self: yes” and “self: no” can be used to look for posts that are or aren’t by you.
- Improve notifications
Reddit has a pretty polished notification system right out of the box. Still, you can fine-tune what you get alerts about—including private messages, upvotes on your posts, and mentions—by clicking your profile picture (top right), then Settings and Notifications.
Also worth a look is a Chrome (and Edge) extension called Reddit Post Notifier. It broadens the scope of what you can get notified about, including specific subreddits, searches you’ve run on Reddit, and specific users. There’s also a built-in filtering option you can use.
- Open posts in new tabs
©Posts can be opened in new tabs automatically. David Nield
We’ve all become used to opening up links in new tabs in the background while we carry on reading what’s in front of us, but this isn’t how links work on Reddit by default—so you can quickly lose track of your place unless you specifically open each post in a new tab.
You can tweak this from the Reddit preferences panel, which means you don’t have to remember to open posts in a new tab each time: Click your profile picture (top right), then Settings and Preferences to find the Open posts in the new tab toggle switch.
