YouTube on Android and iOS now lets you swipe right to the next video

There's a main menu in one corner; icons in the middle of the screen that represent files, folders and application launchers; and often a set of smaller icons in a menu bar, representing other apps and folders for easy access Even if a Windows user hasn't dabbled with MacOS or desktop Linux before, they can generally find their way around because all three platforms use similar design templates. .

 For example, we're still deciding on whether you need a Settings app to access your device's settings (like you do on iOS) or if those functions should be accessible from a shortcut in a drop-down panel (as you usually see on Android). Such is not the case on mobile devices, because they haven't had decades to perfect an overall language.

You slide to the right to see the next clip in the queue, or swipe to the left to go back to the previous clip. Today, the YouTube app for Android and iOS has taken a new step forward for mobile, replacing tapping with sliding when it comes to selecting the next video to watch.

According to Popular Science, swiping requires less manual dexterity than tapping, and less energy, making it perhaps a better choice for navigating a content queue.

The app will apparently decide in the background if that next clip should be the next one in a predefined playlist or one selected by its recommendation AI, based on the content that you usually watch and the channels that you subscribe to.

At the time, the feature was limited to content that appeared on your Home tab, and the demo video didn't show how sliding might work in landscape mode, which is how the majority of YouTube's content is formatted, under penalty of mockery.

 If this feature sounds familiar, that may be because we reported on YouTube's testing back in August. 

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After some testing of our own, we can confirm that landscape and portrait sliding work as advertised and it should be noted that sliding will make the next video automatically play, whether or not your current video is paused. Double-tapping to seek still works as before, and the ability to autoplay your next video (independently of swiping) can still be toggled on and off.

We found no setting in the app to toggle or modify the new swipe action, though. But if you accidentally swipe to your next queued video before you've finished your current one, you can just swipe left to go back, and it should pick up right where you left off.

Takeaways

The YouTube mobile app now fully supports swiping right to see the next video in your queue, and swiping left to see the previous video. 

This system has been in testing since at least August of last year.

If you accidentally swipe to your next video before you've finished watching your current one, you can swipe left to return, and it should pick up where you left off.