Whether you care about comments or not, this small change could have a huge impact.
What you need to know
- This change has been seen in testing on the YouTube app in India.
- It adds a “Comments” button to the video options menu, between Dislike and Share.
- Comments appear in a new window separate from the video details and suggested videos.
- We do not know if this change will roll out more widely (but one can only hope).
Few things are as infamous on the internet as a YouTube video’s comments section — especially for viral videos or niche videos — and while this experimental change YouTube is testing might seem like it’s just hiding the comments out of sight, out of mind, there’s a little more to consider.
YouTube is testing a new change that shifts the comments from the bottom of a video’s listing page to a separate window altogether. It’s only been seen in India so far — India’s been the test bed for a lot of new features for YouTube and Google Maps — and users seeing the change get message at the bottom of the screen where the comments would be that the comments have moved.
The comments are on another page, and so they get a shortcut right in the video listing’s main button menu, between Dislike and Share. The dedicated comments window has some new perks to it with this new UI: pulling down from the top of the comments window refreshes the comment section, which is nice if you’re commenting on a just-dropped mind-blowing movie trailer — shut up, I’m allowed to be a fangirl sometimes.
Some may see this as hiding the comments away from normal people — and that’s not entirely wrong — but I also think that shortcut makes it quicker and easier for people who live in YouTube comment sections to get there. Now, all you have to do is tap once instead of scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.
It remains to be seen if this will roll out more widely, but I really do hope it does. If for nothing else than so I can avoid spoilers when I’m watching through Campaign 1 of Critical Role.
