In recent years, videos in vertical format have become the main protagonist of social networks. It all started with TikTok and Snapchat, but soon both Instagram and YouTube started betting on this format. With Reels and Shortsrespectively. Now traditional YouTube videos can also act as Shorts.

If you use social networks, you will already be familiar with the navigation gesture used on all these platforms: swipe up to go to next video. This is true on all social networks, but on YouTube this way of navigating the interface is limited to Shorts. Soon we will be able to use this gesture to navigate through all videos; This will be a fundamental change in the way we use the app. A change that will be for the worse for many.

YouTube is testing a new way to browse videos: TikTok style

Some YouTube users spotted a change while browsing the platform: In the YouTube app for Android, when playing a video in full screen, it is possible to swipe your finger from bottom to top on the screen to switch to another video, this is how it happens not only in Shorts but also It is possible to use this gesture in traditional longer videos. This was proven by a video shared by Tushar Mehta on X/Twitter.

For now this change testing phaseThis means that only some users of the YouTube app for Android can use it. But this represents a major change in YouTube navigation.

Until now, when watching a video on YouTube, swiping your finger up on the screen served two purposes: to access the video playback bar (advance the video to the part we wanted to see) and to exit full screen mode with a simple movement on the screen, without the need to press a button (in addition to activating the mod) picture in picture).

By changing the use of movement TikTok-like experience It does cause you to lose that very useful gesture to exit full-screen playback, but in addition it can also encourage rapid consumption of videos in a format that was largely not designed to be consumed that way. In other words, people will leave the video faster While longer videos generally aren’t developed in the same way as shorter, more dynamic videos, if you don’t feel “hooked” in the first few seconds.

The only benefit of this change at the interface level is that the YouTube browsing experience will improve. it will be more uniformbecause the same movement will serve the same purpose regardless of whether we see a short or long video.

For now, this way of browsing videos on YouTube appears to be only in the testing phase, and to date, the company has not announced plans to make this change to the navigation of the YouTube app for mobile devices. at risk of appearing like ‘old man shouting at a cloud‘, I hope it stays that way as a test.

Cover photo | Xataka Android

via | Android Authority

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