YouTube is testing the worst change ever in its Android app

We have now a love-hate relationship with YouTube lately. YouTube is undoubtedly the perfect video streaming service on the market, however the platform’s push in the direction of a greater monetization technique with extra adverts and better YouTube Premium costs continues to irk many customers. When you made your peace with current adjustments to YouTube, there’s most likely one other one coming your manner that you just may hate, because the app may introduce scrolling gestures for long-form movies.

Tushar Mehta on X (previously often known as Twitter) noticed that YouTube on Android has launched a scroll gesture for the fullscreen video participant for long-form movies.

This scroll gesture seemingly replaces the swipe-up and down gestures to enter and exit the fullscreen video participant. So if you find yourself in panorama orientation watching a video in fullscreen, you won’t be able to attenuate the video participant with a swipe gesture as you presently can. With this alteration, once you swipe down on a fullscreen long-form video, it can play the subsequent video, emulating the app habits we see for short-form movies within the YouTube Shorts tab throughout the YouTube app.

Proper off the bat, I hate this gesture. It could mess up my muscle reminiscence for YouTube long-form movies and can make immersing myself in a video tougher. Sure, there may be nonetheless a button to enter and exit the fullscreen participant, however the swipe gesture is easy and doesn’t contain as a lot finger gymnastics on giant Android flagships.

Whereas the change seemingly harmonizes the app habits for long-format and short-format movies, it fails to understand the distinction in use circumstances between them. I’m extra selective concerning the long-form content material I click on on and consider, whereas I watch short-form content material with out as a lot thought. So, a gesture to go to the subsequent video is extra appreciated on Shorts however not as a lot for normal YouTube movies, contemplating the truth that you possibly can nonetheless go to the subsequent video with the Subsequent button. Gesture consistency will seemingly break a function that has labored for years.

We presume this alteration is a restricted check, as we couldn’t spot it on a number of units. We may neither find help documentation nor a launch changelog highlighting this alteration.

We’ve contacted Google for feedback on this check. We’ll replace the article after we hear again from them.

Do you want this potential change? Tell us your ideas within the feedback under!