Reddit Is (Mostly) Shutting Down R/all, but There’s Still a Way to Access It.
Reddit is what you make of it. The “front page of the internet” is essentially a collection of different subreddits, each with its own communities, rules, and culture. The main idea is to subscribe to subreddits that match your interests so that the “front page” of the internet is tailored to you , not to other users.
However, browsing posts from popular Reddit subreddits can be interesting, even if you don’t personally subscribe to them. That’s the purpose of r/popular and r/all: the former offers popular posts from various subreddits, while the latter does the same, albeit with fewer filters. For example, you might not want to browse r/all at work, even though Reddit claims it doesn’t contain sexually explicit content. However, other types of NSFW posts may appear there that wouldn’t otherwise appear on r/popular.
Now the situation is changing. As The Verge reports , Reddit is officially shutting down r/all. However, this decision wasn’t unexpected. The company announced its plans to remove r/all back in December, and then did so in January (though it called it an “experiment”). It also removed r/all for desktop users, though that was also part of the experiment. Then, in February, Reddit announced that the experiment was over and that they had decided to get rid of r/all after all.
Reddit confirmed this news in its latest changelog , stating that “to simplify Reddit and improve newsfeed personalization, we are taking the final steps to retire r/all.” From now on, links to r/all will lead to your newsfeed. If you want to see popular posts, you’ll need to head to r/popular. At least, that’s the case for most users.
“Old” Reddit users can still see r/all.
If you’re relatively new to Reddit, you might not even know about “Old” Reddit—the version of the site that adheres to its original, basic design theme. Reddit began rolling out its current theme back in 2018 , but those of us who preferred a simple text-based interface always had the option—either by visiting the site at old.reddit.com or by toggling the “Default to Old Reddit” switch in the Settings tab.
Users logging into older versions of Reddit will still see r/all in the top menu bar and be able to access it directly. It’s unclear why Reddit is reserving this option only for older users, but I don’t question it. The less attention older versions of Reddit receive, the less likely it is that Reddit will abandon this feature.