You have probably scrolled past it somewhere: a flat, robotic voice reading an unbelievable Reddit story while a video game clip plays underneath. Those videos are all over TikTok and Instagram Reels.
The videos are short, easy to consume, and hard to scroll past. That is exactly the kind of content that keeps people opening an app.
On those apps, the formula is everywhere. Some versions use text-to-speech, which is the robotic voice you hear.
Others are read by actual creators, with text on screen or random footage like gameplay or cooking in the background.
Reddit is now testing a way to bring that experience into its own app.
The test covers only certain English-language posts, and it is available on Reddit's iOS and Android apps. When the option shows up, users can choose a "read" mode or a "play" mode for a post.
The catch: the video version does not replace the original text. The post and its comment section stay right where they were, fully interactive.
Huffman's point was simple: people are already turning Reddit stories into narrated videos on other apps, so Reddit might as well make a native version.
The bigger idea behind the test is to turn viral stories into a "video Reddit" format, so people can listen to posts while doing other tasks.
"There is an emerging content type elsewhere on the internet of, basically, podcasts where people read Reddit content," Huffman explained on the call. "I think this version of, like, listened-to or spoken Reddit can be really engaging, as well."
Reddit told TechCrunch the tests are early and small. The goal is to learn whether these formats actually help users, and whether they can feel genuinely Reddit-like instead of like a copy of another app.
The company sees real-world uses. Reddit suggests audio could work well while people are working out, walking, or doing errands, while video with audio could make written exchanges feel more visual.
This is not Reddit's first swing at video. The company has tried video before, including hosting videos directly on the platform and running earlier TikTok-style feed formats.
More recently, Reddit added video in comments.
Video has slowly been seeping into parts of Reddit that used to be pure text. The 10% figure matters because it shows Reddit has been pushing its community toward richer media for a while, even as text remains the heart of the product.
For investors, this test is a signal about where Reddit is spending its energy. A successful audio and video feature could keep people on the app longer and give advertisers new places to appear.
The test is so small that most of the app will not look any different this week, and that smallness is the point.
But this is an early experiment, and small tests like this fail all the time. Reddit has shelved video experiments before, so the real tell will be whether the feature spreads beyond the initial communities and whether users actually keep coming back to it.
If you are a Reddit user, do not be surprised to see a play button on some posts in the coming days. For investors, the real story will be engagement, not hype. The numbers will show whether a narrated Reddit feed is a thing people actually want.
