Feed Stories are more compact and easier to read
What changed on July 8–13: Feed Stories gained a compact round rail, retained scroll position, and clearer seen states.
Why it matters
At the top of Feed, text-heavy Story cards were replaced by compact round items. A horizontal swipe reaches later Stories, and refreshing Feed preserves the rail position instead of resetting it to the start.
Avatars keep their proportions, long Russian names truncate without moving neighboring items, and labels stay still during presses. A thin colored ring remains only for an active own Story or an unseen Story; a seen Story gets no separate gray or black ring.
Round geometry, swiping, and position retention were checked on a physical Pixel 9 in an Android debug build with a local backend. Long names, light and dark themes, and seen states received an additional iOS simulator check.
The physical Android pass did not cover the Story viewer or editor. The final long-name and seen-state contract has not yet been repeated on a physical Pixel either.