Snapchat just changed how you watch Stories and buried its Discover section

Flickr via JDLasica

Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel

On Friday Snapchat announced two new changes: a feature called Story Playlist and the demotion of Discover, the section in its app where publishers like BuzzFeed and Vice show original content every day.

The new playlist feature allows you to select the Story thumbnails from individual people you're friends with and watch them in that order. Snapchat previously auto-played every un-watched Story in reverse chronological order.

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"When we first built Auto Advance we wanted to make it easier to catch up with your friends by playing all of your Stories in recent updates back-to-back," the company wrote on its blog. "Unfortunately, this change made it impossible to individually choose which Story to watch. Sometimes we just want to see what our close friends or family are up to - not all of our friends - and Auto Advance prevented that."

Once the update is made available to everyone - Snapchat says it's just rolling out to "select" Android users for now - Stories will no longer auto-advance. You'll have to tap in and out of individual Stories again.

Here's a GIF to explain:

Snapchat

As part of the same update, the Discover section of Snapchat is being moved below your list of unread Stories. Featured Discover publishers previously sat at the very top of the Stories page.

Snapchat

The old (left) vs. new (right) Discover placement in Snapchat.