YouTube is currently testing a new feature on mobile devices that will likely have a small following among users. As the user noticed, the company reuses the vertical swipe gestures in full-screen mode to move to the next or previous video, similar to Shorts. Tushar Mehta In X.

Currently, on the mobile app, you can swipe up on a video to make it full screen, then swipe down on the video to exit full screen. If you swipe up in full-screen mode, you’ll see a list of recommended videos.

The YouTube product team is pulling off one move after another in the Android app.

Who wants to scroll through a long video? It was more useful to minimize/enlarge the videos.

As if fucking PiP in-app wasn’t satisfying enough for whoever survived it. pic.twitter.com/1jY0XFbiMW

— Tushar Mehta (@thetymonbay) November 11, 2024

With this new change, swiping up in full screen will send you to a new suggested video, similar to how it works on YouTube Shorts or other services like TikTok or Instagram. If you scroll down, the player will take you back to the previous video instead of exiting full-screen mode. To exit full screen using the swipe down gesture, you’ll need to scroll back to the first video or click the button in the corner.

This change, which currently only appears in the testing phase as we can’t replicate it on any of our devices, is another step towards getting users to spend more time in the app, mindlessly swiping from one video to the next and increasing views. But while this may be acceptable for Shorts, it doesn’t seem appropriate for standard, full-format videos that are normally opened for the purpose of watching on their own, rather than just browsing through randomly suggested videos.

The change will also break muscle memory for users who may have become accustomed to simply swiping down to exit completely and will now be confused by the player switching back and forth between videos they never intended to watch.

Of course, the whole point of limited testing runs like this is to gauge user feedback, and if enough people respond negatively to it, the feature could be scrapped. Or it could still be implemented because who cares what users want these days.

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