Viewer-generated shorts with comments will soon be available on YouTube

By Shweta Ganju Read 1 minute 38 seconds

Published: Jul 24, 2023, 12:23:15 PM(IST) | Updated: July 24, 2023, 12:23:15 PM(IST)

Google-owned YouTube has announced that it is testing a feature that will enable mobile viewers to create shorts featuring comments posted on videos they watch.

Google-owned YouTube has announced that it is testing a feature that will enable mobile viewers to create shorts featuring comments posted on videos they watch.

“While creators can already reply to comments (posted on their own content) with a short, we want to offer viewers the opportunity to create content from comments,” the company said on a support page. The short will appear in the shorts feed and on the viewer’s channel page.

“Viewer-generated shorts will not send notifications to the creator or comment author who has a comment on the video,” it added. Also, creators cannot ban their comments from being featured in a short film unless they disable comments on their videos. This experiment is currently available to a small percentage of viewers on Android and iOS mobile devices worldwide.

The video-sharing platform had earlier announced that it was testing a new feature that would allow users to long-press anywhere on the player while watching a video to automatically increase playback speed by 2x.

The company was also testing a feature that would give users a larger preview while searching. This feature can be helpful as it makes it easy for users to find the exact moment in the video they want to watch. Moreover, the platform was testing a lock screen feature that would allow users to disable touch input while watching a video. This will help prevent accidental taps that pause, skip, or interrupt the video.

Last month, the video-sharing platform said it was testing a three-strikes policy for people using ad blockers. Noting that “ad blockers violate YouTube’s terms of service,” the company also detailed how the policy works.

— IANS