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YouTube Shorts is coming to your TV. The company has announced that it has updated its smart TV app to let you watch those short vertical videos on the big screen. The video streaming service has been working on this for the past few months.
YouTube brings Shorts to your TV
Short-form vertical videos, originally introduced by TikTok and copied by the likes of YouTube (Shorts) and Instagram (Reels), have always been in a mobile-first format. These videos cover the full screen on phones, enabling an immersive viewing experience. But, YouTube wanted to bring Shorts to your TV as many people watch the video streaming service on the big screen. To ensure you get a consistent experience across your devices, it has optimized the feature and shared a thought process behind all major design decisions.
YouTube says it tested multiple layouts for Shorts on TVs. Firstly, it prepared a conventional video player layout that you get for longer YouTube videos. It had a seek bar, like/dislike buttons, and a carousel of upcoming content. The other layout was a Jukebox-style horizontally scrolling feed of videos with three Shorts filling up the whole screen of the TV. The Short n the middle will play while you could scroll either side to play the next short video.
But since Shorts on mobile is one video at a time, YouTube eventually decided to go with a similar layout on the TV as well. It tested a couple of designs for this layout as well. One was all about the video with minimal extras on the screen, while the other showed hashtags and buttons all around the video. The final design that is rolling out to users is a mix of the two. You will the video in the middle of the screen with white borders. Buttons and other info, such as the channel name and video title appear next to it. The company says it will continue to refine the Shorts experience on TVs with additional functionality in future releases.
YouTube Shorts are now rolling out on TVs
YouTube Shorts will be available globally in the YouTube app for smart TV models launched in 2019 and later, as well as newer game consoles. The rollout began this Monday but it could take a few weeks for everyone to get the update. You can click here to download the app for your Android TV model from the Google Play Store.
