YouTube is rolling out a sequence of modifications to Shorts, together with a brand new methodology that lets customers shrink the period of brief type movies.
The Google-owned platform announced Thursday that Shorts now comes with a setting that permits customers to double their playback pace. The purpose of creating what’s an already temporary expertise even briefer is to let customers “take in info extra shortly or discover your favourite half quicker,” the platform mentioned.
In an obvious bid for a extra optimistic internet, YouTube has additionally nixed the Shorts dislike button. As a substitute of disliking a video, customers will now should depend on the “Not ” and “Don’t suggest this channel” capabilities to disincentivize sure sorts of content material.
Equally, as a substitute of clicking on a thumb’s up button in the event that they like a video, customers will now have entry to a coronary heart emoji.
Lastly, YouTube can be introducing a brand new “Clear Display screen mode,” which is designed to quickly disguise “all icons and textual content out of your playback view,” giving customers a clear view of their content material unencumbered by floating distractions.
All of those modifications have been made within the service of making “a extra intuitive Shorts expertise,” the corporate mentioned. It’s not precisely clear when the updates will take impact. The corporate mentioned that the options can be rolling out over time, however didn’t give precise dates.
TechCrunch reached out to Google for extra info.
YouTube was late to the brief type video house (it launched Shorts in 2024, a number of years after the launch of TikTok and Instagram Reels), however has managed to draw an viewers since then. YouTube Shorts was averaging 200 billion every day views as of June 2025, CEO Neal Mohan said at keynote in Cannes final yr. (We could qualify this spectacular metric with the context that YouTube counts a “view” because the very first second {that a} video is opened).
A report earlier this yr confirmed that Shorts have been more and more being watched on viewers’ TV screens — and that as a lot as 2 billion hours of such content material was being consumed per 30 days.
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