YouTube Introduces Swiping

Dominic Whitlock 15th January 20198th February 2019 0 Comments

YouTube will soon be rolling out a new way for its audience to navigate between videos, as it becomes the latest app to add a horizontal swipe functionality.

Tinder is credited with the rising popularity of the swipe – the action is almost synonymous with the popular dating app, but more and more social media platforms are adopting it.

At the end of this week, users of YouTube’s iOS app will be able to swipe left to skip ahead to the next video in the ‘Up Next’ section, or swipe right to go back to the previous one.

There is currently no date scheduled for when the feature will be available on Android devices.

The aim of the functionality is to enable users to effortlessly move onto another video, rather than tapping multiple times. It may lead to an increase in overall watch time.

70% of Youtube’s traffic comes from apps, so any change to the user experience is rigorously tested. This update was reportedly two years in the making and was developed with help and feedback from some of the platform’s most popular creators.

YouTube has also been working on adding Stories, a feature made widely popular by Snapchat and Instagram. Any Youtuber with over 100,000 subscribers can now create a Story, which will remain visible for seven days.

Instagram has been testing a new app layout which would see users horizontally scroll through their timeline, rather than vertically. The beta version was accidentally made available to more accounts than expected last month and initial feedback was extremely negative.