YouTube often receives subtle design tweaks, some of which are well-received, while others are met with criticism. Recently, YouTube has been spotted testing a new change to the swipe gesture behavior that will surely break user"s muscle memory.
As spotted by Tushar Mehta on social media platform X, YouTube on Android has modified the way the swipe-down gesture behaves. Currently, swiping down on a fullscreen video exits the fullscreen mode and shows you the entire YouTube UI. However, thanks to the undergoing testing, performing the swipe-down gesture plays the next video instead.
The YouTube product team is fucking the gestures in the Android app one after another.
— Tushar Mehta (@thetymonbay) November 11, 2024
Who the fuck wants to scroll on a long form video? It was more useful to minimize/maximize videos.
As if fucking the in-app PiP wasn"t satisfying enough to whoever is getting off this. pic.twitter.com/1jY0XFbiMW
Notably, this behavior is similar to how you watch short-form videos on the YouTube Shorts tab in the YouTube app. The feature is currently under testing and seems to be available only to a limited set of YouTube Android users. Besides, the swipe-down gesture change has not been spotted in the iOS app.
While there is a dedicated button for exiting and entering fullscreen mode on the YouTube player UI, the swipe gesture is much more convenient. In fact, it is much more helpful when using a large-screen device, such as an Android tablet. Though this change may bring consistency between short-format and long-format video navigation, it compromises ease of use.
Because there is also a dedicated "Next" button available in the YouTube player UI, many users agree that it would be better if YouTube keeps the swipe-down gesture exclusive to exit and enter fullscreen mode.