Reddit’s Consolidating Its DM and Chat Options Into a Single Stream

Okay, this might sound a little confusing to non-Reddit users.

Reddit has announced that it’s making a change to its messaging options, by integrating its DM inbox into its Reddit Chat element.

Yes, Reddit has two separate messaging-aligned functions.

Reddit’s “Chat” tab, which it added back in 2023, is where you’ll find group discussions, and real-time chats about topics of interest, which anybody can join. It then has its messaging “Inbox” on a separate tab, where you can find notifications about your Reddit activity, as well as DMs.

But now, all of these are going to be rolled into one single tab. Seemingly, but then again, these sample screens still have both a “Chat” and an “Inbox” tab, so…

As explained by Reddit:

“Reddit Chat is replacing user PMs. This transition consolidates messaging on Reddit and introduces features like pinned chats for better organization, an unread filter, a new spam folder, more sender context when accepting invites, an allowlist, and a faster experience.”

So your inbox is seemingly going to be transitioned over, but I’m not sure what that means for the “Inbox” tab, though Reddit does also note that existing PMs will remain archived as read-only for reference.

Maybe they’ll live in that tab (Reddit also notes that it won't be disabling DMs till users have had a chance to access them in archive mode, so maybe the tab will disappear at a later stage).

Reddit says that change is designed to help to streamline its systems:

“This consolidation helps us focus on improving one system instead of maintaining multiple. Plus, Reddit Chat's infrastructure is built for the future, unlike the PM system which is about as old as Reddit itself.”

Though many Redditors claim that Reddit has only been slowed down by its increasing ad load, not by functional elements. Yet, even so, Reddit needs to make money, so one way or another, this will improve the app’s performance.

Reddit says that the updated chat UI will begin rolling out soon, with the changes set to be phased in over the next three months.

It’ll be a shift in focus for Reddit users, but essentially, the aim is to bring all of its connective notifications into a single stream, while also adding more filters to better manage your messages in the app.