My opinions on the new UI

Please, at least give us options to customize or toggle these things. I personally strongly dislike most of the changes made, and am frustrated by the lack of control I'm given to locally manage them. I'm sure some people have use for these changes, and that's great, but they're not so subtle that people who don't like them can just ignore them. I think customizability is very important for elements that can impact a user's experience. Forced changes from what you're used to can be very frustrating, especially if you feel inconvenienced by them.

Here are my personal opinions. I can get used to everything other than the first two I mention on this list- but those two are going to drive me crazy whenever I use Discord.

1. This red line for new messages. Scrolling to the bottom of the chat doesn't get rid of it when it's not accompanied by the blue 'new messages' bar on top? Or is it something else? I don't like that I have to either re-enter the chat, press esc, or send a message. In my opinion, it's invasive and hurts the style of the interface. It's just... a giant red line. A bright giant red line. It spans almost the entire width of the chat area, visually taking up unnecessary amounts of space, and is triggered for literally any new messages sent while you're not in the chat. It also appears in between messages sent by the same person. The older one didn't bother me, because it blended in, and I don't think it triggered nearly this frequently? I don't remember, because it didn't stand out excessively to me or completely redirect my attention. This is what I dislike the most.

2. Please give us an option to control the spacing between messages. I have a lot of friends that like separating their messages into multiple smaller ones, and it looks terrible with the massive spacing. Even when people don't type like that, it just makes high volumes of messages harder for me to read. I also don't like that the spacing between newlines and separate messages is different. Long messages for something like welcome/rules/info channels that I split into multiple messages have a clear space between them now, and I have no alternatives for formatting it. There's an easy slider to control the spacing between message groups. Why isn't there one for messages inside of a group?

3. I personally don't use Reactions all that much. I don't really like that three Reactions I seem to have no direct control over will be stuck on my screen for every message I hover over forever. It just feels like unnecessary screen clutter. I think it's great for people that have use for it, but for people who don't, there's nothing you can do about it? This is something I can get used to and not have a problem with, but I feel like it'd be so much easier to have control of 1. which emojis specifically show up there and 2. reasonably how many show up. Maybe someone wants just one? Maybe none?

4. Can we have a 'hide' button for the Active Now bar? I'm not personally bothered by this one, but I feel like that's a really easy fix for people who dislike it.

5. How about having a small bar that controls what buttons are listed over your direct messages, over where the 'Friends' tab currently is? You could use small versions of the icons on it, and it could be an easy toggle that hides/shows elements as the user wants. Or just give the Nitro tab the same toggle option the Library tab has? If they don't want a certain button taking up space, they could toggle it off, and then toggle it back on if they ever wanted it. No hassle!

C l u t t e r

I also see a lot of people complaining about the automatic highlighting on-hover. I totally agree that it can be discomforting and visually unappealing, especially for when you're scrolling while it just flashes like crazy. This can be mitigated by not moving your mouse while scrolling; but it'd be nice to have a toggle.

Overall, I feel like the new ui is distracting, inefficient, and visually discomforting. Your attention is shifted to all the wrong places, and there is an overload of things popping up all over the place. People visually sensitive may struggle with this. I appreciate that Discord continues making updates and blog posts, but I feel I must critically say this update was released half-baked and without flexibility.