YouTube is reportedly testing out a new feature for users of its Android app that will enable them to quickly jump to the next or the previous video by simply swiping left or right.
A couple of days ago, YouTube rolled out dark mode to its Android app, a few months after iOS users had received the new theme. Now, it looks like Google is testing a new feature that allows users to skip a video with a simple swiping gesture.
First spotted by Google+ user Joe Kelly, the addition of this gesture will basically allow users to quickly move between videos by swiping to play the next or the previous video. The video that plays upon swiping left is the item listed in the «Up Next» queue below the video being currently played. According to Kelly, this feature is currently only working when videos from the «Home» tab in the YouTube Android app are played. This is rather interesting since the «Up Next» list is present beneath every video, regardless of whether it is played from a user’s Home tab or not.
The functioning of this gesture can be viewed in the video below:
As can be observed, swiping is much quicker than tapping on the screen and then selecting whether you’d like to skip to the next or the previous video. By contrast, skipping to the next video in the desktop version of YouTube simply requires clicking the ‘next’ icon beside the ‘play’ icon on the control bar. As the feature is currently is testing stages, the next/previous icons overlaid on the video player in the Android app are still present, though they will likely be removed once the swiping gesture gets properly implemented.
We have not yet spotted the feature on any of our Android devices which means it is probably in very early testing stages, and it will take some time before it is rolled out everyone.
Source: Joe Kelly (Google+) via 9to5Google
