Swiping is here to turn the YouTube app into ultimate time-waster
If you spend too much time stuck in YouTube's vortex of suggested videos, wait until you see this.
The company is gradually rolling out a new feature on iOS, letting you swipe forward to see the next recommended video, and backward to see the previous video (which will pick up where you left off).
"With 70% of YouTube watch time happening on mobile, one of our focus areas is to give users powerful and intuitive control over video playback," a Google rep said via e-mail.
The Tinder-like swipe (which works in portrait and landscape mode) is a huge change that will fundamentally alter the way users interact with the app -- and, likely, increase the number of videos they see on the service.
According to Popular Science, which spoke to YouTube Watch product manager Matthew Darby, YouTube has been working on the feature for two years and tried a number of different approaches until it found the one that worked best.
The company has carefully been adding new ways to interact with videos on mobiles to make the experience faster and more natural. In 2017, the company added the option to skip 10 seconds forward or backward during playback by double-tapping on the left or right side of the video (if you haven't been using it, try it -- it's a life-saver in certain situations).
The swiping gesture should reach all iPhone users this week; there's no word on when it's coming to Android, though.
Topics Android iOS Social Media YouTube
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
