Johannesburg - Popular video-sharing platform YouTube has updated its mobile app with new features that should make viewing and controlling videos a bit easier, with new gestures, playback controls and video chapters.
Among the new features, the biggest update is a new gesture to enable or disable full-screen video. Previously, users would tap the button or would rotate a phone to have a fullscreen. Now you can easily swipe up on the video window to enter full-screen and swipe down to return back to the standard player page.
The new gestures will only work when swiping on the playback window itself.
The company has also made captions more accessible by moving the closed captions button to the overlay menu. The autoplay button has also been shifted to the top of the screen, users can also tap on the timestamp of a video to switch between viewing how much time has elapsed in a video and how much time is left.
“You’ll also notice small improvements to the player, like re-arranged buttons that simplify its look and snappier controls that make any action you take even faster," the company said in a statement.
In May, YouTube introduced Chapters, a feature that makes it easy to skip the entire chapter of a video and watch the next one. Now, the company has expanded the version of the video chapters feature that lets users view a list of all the chapters for the video, including a preview thumbnail similar to a DVD menu.
"We’re always looking for ways to make it easier to watch and interact with your favourite videos,” the company said.
Another big feature that YouTube is adding is a new set of ‘suggested actions’ which will prompt users to rotate their phone or play a video in VR for a better experience when watching a video.
YouTube says it will be working on adding more suggested actions in the future.
IOL TECH