Google has been experimenting on its YouTube Android app for a while now and most of its features eventually go live such as revamping the “Up Next” screen that shows how the next video overlayed over the last playing video. The countdown is shown on the upper right corner. The Play Now and Cancel buttons are displayed below the upcoming video.
The app now has topic filters that are pill-shaped icons that now allow users to fine-tune the YouTube videos that are shown on your homepage. Other features they’ve introduced features including hiding comments and subscriber counts by default and also the giant video sharing platform changed how it ranks 24-hour record-breaking new music videos.
The latest test YouTube is doing is moving up the comment section above the “Up Next” screen to make it easier for those watching a video to read and comment on the video while watching it.
In the current design, you have to scroll through past recommended videos to get to the comment section.
With the new user interface, you will see three featured comments right below the video description.
When you tap on the three comments which work even when the video is running will bring up the complete comments section.
A note will remind those taking part in this test that the comment section has been relocated to the top.
Those three featured comments are based on how recent a comment is or a pinned comment by the YouTube creator. Pinned comments with a link, more than 140 words or are self-promotional will not be included in the featured comment section.
People are loving it and I can’t wait to see this new feature go live as I am one of those people who usually quickly scroll to the comment section once I click on a YouTube video.
“We want to make it easier for people watching videos to find comments in the YouTube app without having to scroll through “Up Next” videos, so we’re testing out a new comment section that appears directly below the video. The new section will show up to 3 comments, with an option to view all comments while you continue to watch the video – just like you can today,” read the Google blog post.
YouTube had a bug that showed videos on its web homepage in a list view
There was a bug on YouTube that changed its web homepage by displaying videos in list view. The videos have their thumbnails removed and now show one item per line. Besides the video is the title, uploader, view count, date and a long description.
9To5Google reports that each card noted whether the video was “Recommended” or from a particular channel. One or two carousels for “Top news” and “Trending” were unaffected after really scrolling.
YouTube confirmed it was a bug and was working on fixing it.
If your YouTube homepage is showing videos in a list view (instead of a grid) this is not an intentional change and we're working to fix it!
Thanks for all of your reports, and we'll share another update when the issue is resolved.
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) October 31, 2019
