Reddit Launches Audio-Video Test for Posts, Enabling Background Listening

Reddit announced on August 17, 2026 that it will launch a new audio-video feature test, aiming to present popular stories on the platform in a more vivid format and allow users to listen to posts in the background while handling other tasks. Starting Monday, the feature will be tested in selected communities, covering video and audio posts, to assess the appeal of different content types and explore the potential for large-scale rollout.

The plan to add narration to Reddit posts was first revealed by CEO Steve Huffman during the company's second-quarter earnings call in July 2026. He noted that users already consume Reddit content in audio or video form on other platforms, such as through text-to-speech or human narration of popular stories, with some videos displaying text or featuring background visuals like gameplay or cooking processes. Huffman said an emerging content type on the internet is podcast-style readings of Reddit content, and he believes this "audible" or "spoken" Reddit is equally appealing.

Reddit said the current test is still in an early, limited experimental stage, mainly to understand how the new format can provide convenience to users and how to implement it in a way that fits the community's native atmosphere. When the feature is available, users can choose to "read" or "play" a post. The test currently applies only to certain English-language posts and is accessible only through Reddit's iOS and Android apps. The company stressed that the new format will not replace traditional text posts; users can still browse and interact with original posts and comments as before.

This is not Reddit's first foray into video. The company previously launched native video hosting and tried multiple iterations of a TikTok-style video feed. More recently, Reddit introduced video support in comments, which, according to official data, now accounts for more than 10% of all video posts on the platform.