YouTube is a teenager now. By web standards, it is close to picking up a pension. But that doesn’t mean its adverse changing its old ways to stay down with the kids.
First the Google-owned video giant caved on vertically-shot videos to fit in with the Instagram and Snapchat crowd. Then it introduced ‘Reels’ as a Stories-like subcategory on channel pages. Now it seems like YouTube is adopting the universal touchscreen gesture for “next!”.
Within the YouTube for Android app is testing out the ability to swipe Tinder-style to the next video in the “Up Next” queue, which refreshes when you load a video. Users can also swipe back to see the previous video if they’d like to see it again.
Related: What are YouTube Reels?
Given the speed at which YouTube tries to push you onto the next clip – before you exit the app and move on with your day – this will actually be a pretty handy feature. Google+ user Joe Kelly (via Neowin) spotted the addition of the gesture, within his YouTube app, and posted the video below.
The feature, which only works when browsing videos from the ‘Home’ tab right now, appears to be pretty speedy. Certainly quicker than tapping the ‘Up Next’ button within the YouTube app.
This appears to be a limited test as we were unable to recreate the functionality on an Android phone. It’s certainly one to keep an eye on though. Let us know if you spot the feature out in the wild.
What other features would you like to see YouTube roll out in order to match the likes of Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook? Share your suggestions with us @TrustedReviews on Twitter.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.