Redditors slam desktop experiment as ‘awful’ and ‘horrible’ after layout change

Many Reddit users are waking up this week to be greeted with a new desktop layout experiment that rolled out without warning. And to no one’s surprise, the response has been overwhelmingly negative.

The most common complaint? Wasted screen space. Users with larger monitors are seeing massive blank areas flanking a compressed content feed. One called the design “absolutely dogsh*t” and shared a screenshot showing the empty space the new design creates. In response, another user with an ultrawide monitor also shared a screenshot showing just how much space is wasted. You can check both screenshots below for reference:

Reddit admin TheOpusCroakus confirmed this is an experiment that typically lasts between 2 and 6 weeks. Users found little comfort in that timeline. “2-6 weeks isn’t good news,” one Redditor responded, questioning why anyone thought this design was a good idea in the first place. The forceful nature of the rollout also drew criticism, with multiple threads expressing frustration that users can’t opt out of experiments they never agreed to join.

The sidebar now collapses by default, and a large search bar dominates the top of the feed. Many compared it to a mobile version forced onto desktop, saying it makes no sense for wider screens.

Some tech-savvy users quickly found workarounds, sharing CSS fixes and browser extensions to restore the old appearance. One detailed technical breakdown pointed out the flawed CSS implementation that artificially limits content width when the search bar appears.

So if you’re not a fan of this, just add the following code to your Adblock/uBlock list:

https://www.redditstatic.com/shreddit/search-hero-client-css-*.css

Just keep in mind that this trick might stop working if Reddit changes stuff on the backend. So if you see your UI break, make sure to disable this and refresh the page to see if it was the culprit.

I’m also seeing this new UI on my end. On my MacBook Air, it honestly doesn’t look as bad. But I suspect those seeing massive amounts of blank space are using high-resolution monitors. Scaling likely plays a big role in how much wasted space appears on screen.

The experiment has spawned complaints across multiple subreddits, including r/pcmasterrace and r/Design, with users asking “who thought all that empty space” was a good design choice. For now, affected users will need to either live with the changes or resort to workarounds until the experiment ends.

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