Snapchat has scrapped its auto-advance function in favor of a new Story playlist feature that’s all about personal curation.
In case you’re not familiar with Stories, the feature allows the app’s users to share a collection of images and videos during a 24-hour period. Previously, the integration of auto-advance meant users would have to sit through all of the recent stories by profiles they follow back-to-back. It seems the app pegged on to the fact that its users were frustrated by the auto-play option. After all, watching stories in bulk meant having to repeatedly skip through content you weren’t interested in.
Snapchat announced on Friday that select Android users can now either revert to watching one story at a time, or create their own auto-advance playlists. The latter is a nifty new feature that can be enabled by tapping on the story thumbnails that you wish to watch, automatically adding them to a playlist. Then, all you have to do is hit the play button at the bottom of your screen to watch your chosen stories.
To abate the resultant concerns such a change would have raised with marketers — whose ads are inserted in between users’ stories — Snapchat is introducing post-roll ads, reports TechCrunch. What this essentially means is that even if you decide to view a single story it may result in an ad automatically playing after you’ve watched its main content. For bulk playlist stories, ads will appear in the same manner. With a reported IPO on the horizon, the last thing Snapchat wants to do is scare off advertisers, even if that means exposing its users to more promotional content. After all, Snapchat has to justify its predicted $25 billion valuation if it does end up going public in March.
However, another update introduced today may raise alarm bells for the app’s Discover content providers. Instead of displaying Discover channels at the top of the Stories section, Snapchat is now placing users’ stories in that prominent position. As a result, Discover channels will be relegated to the bottom of the pile, which arguably makes sense considering the app’s media partners already have their own dedicated page.
Snapchat promises a wider Android roll-out of the update soon, and is also planning to bring the new features to iOS.
Discord is trying to push more visibility on the internet for some of its biggest communities, and there's a good chance your messages could end up in a Google Search. The platform is preparing to make conversations from certain public servers searchable on the web, so there's a privacy setting you might want to check before the rollout begins.
According to Discord's official announcement, the changes will roll out in two stages. Starting November 16, qualifying servers will have public web pages featuring automated summaries of conversations. By mid-December, individual messages from eligible public channels could also appear word-for-word in Google and other search engines.
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?