Quickly Disable This New YouTube Feature on Android
YouTube has just rolled out a new feature, and nobody knows what it’s for. It’s an accessibility feature that YouTube is rolling out, but it’s not yet available to everyone. The feature concerns YouTube Shorts, but apart from a few exceptional cases, you may not want to activate it.
This is Android Authority, which discovered this new option in the settings of the Android YouTube application on a Google Pixel 9 Pro XL (test). It was also found on a OnePlus 13 (test). This feature allows you to watch YouTube Shorts in landscape mode on your smartphone.
A clumsy approach to accessibility?
We recommend that most of you refrain from activating this option. We’ll explain why below. But if you’d still like to try it out, here’s how:
- In the YouTube app, click on your profile icon in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
- In the top right-hand corner, press the gear icon
- In Settings, scroll down to the “Video and Audio Preferences” section
- Select the submenu labeled “Accessibility.”
- In “Accessibility”, activate the switch entitled “Rotate Shorts”.
Once activated, this function automatically switches to landscape mode when you reorient your smartphone. Apparently, such a feature was needed to supplement the automatic rotation already natively present on all Android smartphones. The reason is that YouTube shorts are designed to be filmed and viewed vertically, just like any other TikTok. It was, therefore, impossible to watch a YouTube short in landscape mode.
The problem is we’re talking about a smartphone screen. The screen diagonal doesn’t exceed 7 inches. In landscape mode, the shorts are displayed very small, and the video is surrounded by black bands that waste most of your screen’s surface area.
But why on earth offer this? We were unable to find any official communication from Google on the subject. Some of our American colleagues speculate that this feature could be aimed at users with reduced mobility who watch videos on a smartphone attached to a stand in landscape mode.
The fact that the option is tucked away in the sub-menu dedicated to accessibility suggests that YouTube’s intention was laudable. The odd thing is that this feature appears to be explicitly targeted at smartphone viewing of Shorts. YouTube is expected to have solved the problem of landscape mode on foldable smartphones and tablets by the end of 2024.
Still, it’s pretty crazy to release a feature that nobody can see the point of. Viewing Shorts in landscape mode is virtually pointless. There is so little interest that even the supposed accessibility approach loses all meaning. Does making Shorts more challenging to view correctly really make them more accessible?
It’s sarcastic, but this option of Shorts in landscape mode at least has the merit of discouraging a little doomscrolling. The few Sony Xperia fans must also be howling with joy since this landscape mode is ideally suited to the 16:9 screens of their smartphones.
What do you think this function for rotating Shorts in landscape mode would be suitable for? Is it available in your YouTube application?
Source:
Android Authority