Snapchat may bring back a dedicated Stories section as users continue to criticise redesign

Snapchat is testing a new look for its controversial new Friends page, which should make Stories much easier to find and watch.

The Snapchat app was recently treated to a major redesign, which has gone down badly with hundreds of thousands of users.

One of the biggest criticisms surrounds Stories. They used to have their own dedicated section, which you could find by swiping left on the main camera screen.

In the new version of Snapchat, they’re bundled with regular Snaps and messages on the new Friends page, which you can access by swiping right on the camera screen.

To complicate matters further, any content that appears on the Friends page isn’t organised chronologically. Instead, Snapchat says machine-learning technology decides what order everything appears in.

As a result, users say they’ve been struggling to find their best friends’ Stories in the new version of Snapchat. Fortunately, the company appears to be working on a solution.

It is experimenting with tabs for the Friends page, which would essentially divide content into three sections: Groups, Stories and All.

The All tab would presumably be the default view, showing Stories, Snaps, messages and group chats.

Tapping the Stories tab, meanwhile, would hide everything but Stories from the Friends page.

Snapchat only appears to be testing the tabbed interface at the moment, but if it did decide to roll it out officially, the move would be welcomed by the majority of users.

Stories is one of Snapchat’s most popular features, so anything that makes it easier to use again would go down well.

A petition calling for Snapchat to reverse its recent redesign has attracted more than one million signatures, but the company isn’t likely to bow to the pressure.

“We believe that the redesign of our application that we announced on our last call will provide a strong foundation for the evolution of our business,” Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel said during the company’s most recent earnings call.

“That’s because our redesign separates social from media, solving many of the problems that arise when friends are commingled with professional content creators. While we are still very early in the rollout, we are optimistic about the potential to unlock additional growth with the redesign of our application.”

However, he also revealed that further tweaks are in the pipeline.

“As expected, it will take time for our community to get used to the changes, but overall, we are pleased with the initial results and will be making the redesign available to our entire community in Q1.

“There is a lot of work ahead as we optimize the updated application, but our early observations support the thesis behind the new architecture and the many growth opportunities that it provides.”

He added that the redesign also succeeds in making Snapchat “simpler and easier to use, especially for older users”.