YouTube plots its TV takeover with a redesigned video player

YouTube wants people to do more than just sit back and watch videos on their TVs.

To that end, it’s launching a redesigned video player for smart TVs and streaming devices, with a sidebar view for descriptions, comments, chapter links, and other details. While such information was already available in YouTube’s TV app, the old design used an overlay that covered up the video when users clicked into the description. The new player shrinks the video down so it appears alongside the additional info.

It’s a subtle change, but Kurt Wilms, YouTube’s director of product for the living room, says it lays the groundwork for further TV updates to come as big-screen viewing time soars. Last month, Nielsen reported that YouTube was the most-watched streaming service on TVs over the previous 12 months, and YouTube says it now streams more than 1 billion hours on TVs per day. Citing internal data, The Information reported last year that TVs accounted for 45% YouTube’s U.S. viewing time, versus less than 30% in 2020.

Wilms says YouTube wants to respond to the growth by bringing more of the site’s interactivity to the big screen.

“There’s often moments where you want to lean in, and you want to engage with the video, and that’s sort of unique with YouTube,” Wilms says. “So it’s been an interesting challenge for us to think about how we enable that on the platform.”

Clicking in

The way to access YouTube’s interactive elements is the same as before: Just click the video title above the playback controls. This will now shrink the video to roughly two-thirds of its regular size, leaving room for a sidebar that’s just big enough to be legible from the couch.

While this still isn’t the most obvious interface interaction, Wilms says YouTube is looking at ways to make the feature more apparent now that it doesn’t block the video itself, for instance by automatically showing the sidebar at the end of a video.

“We’ll probably be playing around in the future with how this works, but you can see how the possibilities open up when you have this capability,” he says.

YouTube also isn’t adding any new interactivity features just yet. As before, the sidebar displays descriptions, likes, views, comments, and a link to the creator’s channel. Some videos can also display chapters, and the sidebar allows creators to display shopping links, which Wilms says are “huge” for the site.

Still, YouTube could introduce more features to the sidebar over time. Wilms hints at potentially offering QR codes for links in descriptions as one example.

“This first launch is about enabling the form factor, but you’ll see it gives us a nice space on the right-hand side to add more features,” he says.

Second screen

The push for more interactivity on the big screen arose in part because people already interact with the site while watching TV. It’s just that they’re doing it on their phones.

Wilms points to a 2019 study by venture capitalist Mary Meeker which found that 88% of Americans use their phones while watching TV. In talking to its own users, YouTube found that people who watched on their TVs would often load the same exact video on their phones so they could read and interact with comments.

“That was the big ‘a-ha’ moment, of, ‘We should build a lot this stuff on the TV, and we should build it in a way that’s seamless and doesn’t distract,'” he says.

YouTube already offers a second screen feature for phones, which automatically syncs what users are watching on the TV so they can read and respond to comments. Wilms says the TV app’s redesign is meant to be complementary, and may compel more people to sync their phones, especially for features such as commenting, which YouTube probably won’t offer through the TV.

“If you see a particular comment want to reply to it, that’s not the kind of thing we’re going to build into the TV remote,” he says.

YouTube’s TV takeover

While YouTube is often associated with viewing on mobile devices and the web, that’s quickly changing. In the United States, YouTube’s usage on TVs overtook Netflix for the first time in October 2022, and it’s now maintained that lead for an entire year. The number of top YouTube channels that are watched primarily on TVs is now up 400% over the last three years.

Wilms attributes the growth to basic improvements in technology and broadband access, which are making it easier to watch on the big screen.

“When we say, ‘Hey, why are you watching YouTube on a television?’ We hear often, ‘It’s the best picture quality in my house, or has the best speakers, and I love my YouTube content,'” he says.

That makes sense, though it doesn’t exactly explain why YouTube’s TV usage has grown even as other streaming services have flattened.

So, here’s another idea: Subscription streaming services are getting worse with higher prices, more ads, and more annoying roadblocks, such as crackdowns on password sharing and upsells for better video quality. Free streaming services make for an increasingly compelling alternative, and they’re growing at record rates. YouTube could be the biggest beneficiary as the post-cable generation questions how much TV, if any, is worth paying for.

Wilms declines to comment directly on that theory, and instead points to how YouTube is different from those other services.

“They don’t have video comments. They don’t have things like liking a video. They don’t have things like subscribing and having a relationship with a creator and seeing their other uploads,” he says. “That’s something that’s very unique about YouTube, and we’re going to continue to build features that lean into that uniqueness.”

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