The March 25th UI Update is a Massive Downgrade on Desktop – Request for a Legacy UI Option

I want to voice my frustration with the recent UI update, particularly how it affects usability and overall user experience. While I understand the intent of modernizing the interface to match the mobile UI, this update introduces several major issues that negatively impact how I use Discord.

Key Concerns

• Server Icon Size & Scaling Issues: The new layout shrinks server icons significantly, making quick navigation frustrating. The only workaround is increasing text size with Ctrl +, but that forces constant back-and-forth adjustments in accessibility settings just to make the UI readable. This shouldn’t be something users have to deal with on first startup.
• Channel & Member List Spacing: The scalable channel bar is a nice concept but isn’t actually useful. The claim that "you can now see longer channel names" is misleading, due to having channel descriptions for additional context. Meanwhile, the excessive spacing in the member list wastes screen/message space—there was nothing wrong with it before.
• Redundant UI Elements: The UI update now announces which server I’m in three different places. The server selection sidebar and the top channel bar already serve this function, showing which server your in on the top is redundant and could be used for more space to see more channels/text or introduce Channel Tabs or other features that might be helpful. (Or just keep it blank! Empty space can be good too!) This extra clutter just makes the UI feel bloated.
  Voice Channels are also affected by this, a gradient is a nice touch, but almost draws too much attention to it if your focused in on it. Being able to keep the dark background for the Dark-Mode-die-hard fans would make it look much better than what the current version has.
• Performance & Accessibility Issues: I never used to have this issue, but now I'm experiencing frame rate drops for the application, even with hardware acceleration on. For gamers, this is a big issue. Scrolling through text and forum channels is noticeably laggy compared to the last update (The Old UI). I hope this is temporary, but for someone with motion sickness, it hurts the eyes more than before.
  Additionally, the new rounded "squircles" everywhere do not improve the look of Discord; in fact, they make it look worse. The contrast between Circles and squircles, creates “visual vomit”, and extra lines around everything make readability harder on the eyes instead of improving the look and feel of Discord.
   

Request for a Legacy UI Option

This is exactly what happened with the mobile UI update. The community didn’t want it, but it was forced on us anyway. People preferred the old UI because it was cleaner, easier to navigate, and more visually balanced. If Discord is going to push major UI overhauls like this, there should be an option to revert to the legacy UI or at least keep core elements from it.

Discord used to be about the community, but now it feels like a corporation making changes no one asked for. If there’s actual demand for this UI refresh, show me the sources—because the majority of the community have complaints.

I’m at the point where I’m seriously considering deleting my account and moving to another platform. I don’t want to, but if this is the future of Discord, then it’s not the platform I signed up for—or the one I pay money for.

For now, I refuse to use the Desktop Client and will be sticking to an older mobile version just to stay in touch with friends. This is a terrible compromise, as I admin and moderate small-to-medium communities, and the outdated mobile version prevents me from using slash commands or interacting with bot-based app actions. So, consider this my strike.

If these changes continue, I’ll make sure to move my friends off Discord to platforms that actually listen to their community.