In fierce competition with TikTok and Instagram Reels in the short-form video market, Google’s popular streaming platform YouTube is completely revamping its Shorts format. Aiming to give the platform a much more intuitive, modern, and user-friendly structure, the company announced a series of major updates that will directly impact the viewing experience.
These new features, which will be rolled out to accounts gradually, are set to change our Shorts habits.
Watching Videos at Double Speed
With the new update, users gain the ability to play Shorts content at double (2x) speed, just like with long-form videos.
- This will allow viewers to consume content in a much shorter timeframe.
- They will be able to skip to specific, highly anticipated, or interesting focal points of the videos within seconds.
Dislike Is Out, Heart Is In
Aiming to capture a more positive and innovative language in its interface design, YouTube is making a major change to its long-standing, classic buttons:
- Users will now use options like “Not Interested” to hide content they don’t want to see in their feeds from the algorithm.
- The classic thumbs-up icon is also being replaced by a heart emoji.
Clean Screen Mode
When watching videos, having on-screen text, usernames, or interaction icons cover the image can be annoying for many users. Developed to streamline the viewing experience, Clear Screen mode temporarily hides all interface elements with a single touch. This allows visually-driven content to be watched with zero obstructions and in full-screen performance.
200 Billion Views Per Day
Behind these investments YouTube is making into its Shorts interface lie the tremendous statistics the platform has achieved. Despite entering the market later than its competitors, Shorts has captured an extraordinary growth momentum. According to the latest data announced by YouTube CEO Neal Mohan:
- The platform reached the milestone of an average of 200 billion daily views as of June 2025 data.
- It is clear that short-form videos are not just confined to mobile devices but are also reaching a massive audience on big screens; Shorts watch time on televisions is approaching nearly 2 billion hours per month.
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