YouTube tests new feature that replaces fullscreen gesture with scrolling videos

YouTube is currently testing a new feature on mobile that will likely have few fans among users. The company is repurposing the vertical scroll gestures in fullscreen mode to switch to next or previous video, similar to Shorts, as noticed by user Tushar Mehta on X.

Currently, you can swipe up on a video in the mobile app to make it fullscreen and then swipe down on it to exit fullscreen. If you scroll up in fullscreen mode, you get a list of suggested videos.

With this new change, swiping up in fullscreen will send you to a new suggested video, similar to how it works in YouTube Shorts or other services such as TikTok or Instagram. If you were to swipe down, the player will then take you back to the previous video rather than exiting fullscreen mode. You need to go all the way back to the first video to exit fullscreen using the swipe down gesture or click the button in the corner.

This change, currently seemingly only in testing phase as we can't replicate on any of our devices, is yet another push to make users spend even more time in the app, mindlessly swiping from one video to the next and racking up views. However, while this maybe acceptable for Shorts, it does seem out of place for standard, full-form videos that one normally opens with the intent of watching by itself rather than just to just scroll through random suggested videos.

The change will also break muscle memory for users who might have now gotten accustomed to simply swiping down to exit full and will now be confused with the player simply swapping back and forth between videos they never intended to watch.

Of course, the entire point of limited test runs like this is to gauge user feedback and if enough people respond negatively to it, the feature could get scrapped. Or it may get implemented anyway because who even cares what users wants these days.

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