YouTube Shorts switcheroo replaces the Dislike button with a Save button for some

11 Oct 2024, 16:14 by Karandeep Singh Oberoi · Android Police

Key Takeaways

A new UI for YouTube Shorts may swap the Dislike and Save buttons for some users.
The UI change has only rolled out to a small number of users on the platform's mobile app.
With the change, the Dislike button will be hidden away in the three-dot menu.

Video-sharing behemoth YouTube has been making some significant strides with short-form videos on its platform.

YouTube Shorts, as we've come to love and hate, is introducing a new UI change following last week's announcement about longer short-form video support. The tech giant shared plans to bump Shorts' duration to three minutes, up from sixty seconds, starting October 15, and flanking it might be a change that could deter negative feedback and encourage users to save videos to their playlists for future reference.

YouTube will soon let creators tell longer stories within the Shorts format

YouTube is bumping Shorts' duration to 3 minutes

As highlighted by YouTube in a support post, via Android Authority, as part of a limited test, users have begun seeing a switcheroo between the Dislike and Save buttons within YouTube Shorts.

For reference, currently, the Dislike button sits on the second spot on the right, while the Save to playlist button can only be accessed by tapping the three dot menu. The random update, which is reportedly appearing even for users who haven't opted in to YouTube's experimental features, replaces the two buttons' position, seemingly making leaving Dislikes a convoluted process.

While the switch does have its benefits, like helping increase creator morale by promoting fewer negative interactions, and emphasizing on saving content and sharing it, it does have user-facing drawbacks, like accidental saving, and limited straightforward options to deliver feedback.

This is a limited rollout, for now

Source: YouTube

As of now, this change appears to be limited to mobile devices, though I am not seeing it on the latest versions of the app on Android and iOS.

In other YouTube-related news, we recently reported on YouTube seemingly hiding the Skip button on videos. Normally, you'd see the countdown timer letting you know when the Skip button would be available for use. With the recent change, however, we spotted the complete absence of the button, only for it to show up after the invisible countdown had elapsed.

The streaming giant later confirmed in a statement that the behavior was intentional. "To allow users to focus on the video creative and make the player more seamless with YouTube content, we are reducing elements on the ads player. In doing so, viewers can engage more deeply with the ad through a cleaner experience," said YouTube.

Google says the YouTube skip ad button isn't gone, it's just different

Google says YouTube's Skip ad button isn't gone, it's just different

Now you can 'engage deeply' with ads