Those who often watch YouTube videos on smartphones are probably used to the standard gestures. A swipe-up on a video enables fullscreen. Another swipe-up brings up the UI, allowing you to check other videos or subscribe to the channel. Well, there's a chance these gestures would change soon.
Recently, Tushar Mehta (Digital Trends contributor) found that the Android YouTube app wasn't behaving as usual. In what's likely an A/B testing, YouTube had reconfigured the gestures for a fullscreen full-length video. Instead of exiting fullscreen, swiping down now moves you to the next video and swiping up moves back to the previous video.
The YouTube product team is fucking the gestures in the Android app one after another.
— Tushar Mehta (@thetymonbay) November 11, 2024
Who the fuck wants to scroll on a long form video? It was more useful to minimize/maximize videos.
As if fucking the in-app PiP wasn't satisfying enough to whoever is getting off this. pic.twitter.com/1jY0XFbiMW
As you can tell, the two responses to vertical swipes are exactly the same as when you watch a TikTok video or YouTube Shorts. In other words, YouTube wants to see if the short video swipe up/down format is a good fit for regular full-screen horizontal videos. Mehta didn't seem to like it, but what do you think?
Is this the kind of change you want to see from YouTube? What changes or new features are you hoping to see? Let us know in the comments and stay tuned to TechNave for more news like this.
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