Snap is abandoning plans to simplify Snapchat’s design as it reports losing 1 million users in North America. In its Q1 2025 earnings report on Tuesday, Snap said that instead it was going to start testing an “advanced” layout that would retain the app’s five existing tabs.
Last year, the company first began testing a “Simple Snapchat” redesign, which involved removing the Snap Map and private chats tabs from the main navigation bar, leaving users with tabs for stories, the camera, and a TikTok-like Spotlight video feed.
Snap is now abandoning these plans after months of testing, likely after seeing declining usage or user frustration. “Our most active Snapchat users have consistently shown a preference for the five-tab layout, preferring the familiar tile-based content discovery system and a dedicated Map tab,” Snap wrote in a letter to investors. In 2018, Snap’s shares plummeted and users scattered after a redesign aimed at separating content from friends and brands.
According to the company, the updated five-tab layout “combines the best of both worlds” as it will add more stories to messaging and make it easier to find Spotlight, which will appear directly to the right of the camera button.
Snap did not say how widely the redesign was rolled out or where it was tested. However, the company reported a loss of users in North America in the last quarter: the number of daily active users dropped to 99 million compared to 100 million users in Q4 2024. Snapchat usage in North America has been virtually flat for almost three years.
Despite the decline in the number of North American users, Snap reported a 14 percent year-over-year increase in revenue to $1.36 billion, which it attributed to the growth of advertising and subscriptions to Snapchat Plus. The number of daily active users in the world continues to grow, increasing to 460 million from 453 million last quarter.
