NEW YORK — Recently YouTube redesigned its playback speed controls and added a couple of nice features to its app.
It’s been testing different things in recent months, and some tests sound pretty exciting while others have people raising their eyebrows. In YouTube’s latest test, we have a new gesture being tested for longer videos.
TikTok’s “Swipe up” gesture moves you to a new video. Since the gesture got popularized by TikTok, it was copied into YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, among other short-video sharing solutions. Now, YouTube is testing the gesture for regular-length videos, not Shorts.
The swipe-up gesture is a quick and easy way to move through a series of short vertical videos, but it’s generally primarily suitable for vertical videos. However, YouTube seems to think the gesture may be useful for horizontal videos as well, and this change is quite a dramatic one.
Right now, when you’re enjoying a video on YouTube on full screen (landscape orientation), the swipe-up gesture is used to exit full screen, rather conveniently.
The change has been spotted only on Android phones at the moment. You can also swipe from either side on Android phones to leave fullscreen mode, and you can also do that from the arrow button in the top left corner.
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