YouTube will finally allow you to hide the pop-up recommendations that appear at the end of videos, the company announced on Wednesday. Now, when you see an end screen, you can tap a new “Hide” button in the top-right corner of the video player to hide the pop-ups from the current video you’re watching.
Selecting this button will only hide end screens for the current video you’re watching, not for all videos on the platform, the company notes. If you want to bring the end screen back, you can tap the “Show” button.
The decision to let users hide end screens is a welcome addition to the platform, especially since they can end up covering up the last bit of a video and make it hard to see what’s happening in some cases.
The company also announced that it’s removing the “Subscribe” button that appears when you hover your cursor over a video’s branded watermark. YouTube explains that it’s doing so because there’s already a “Subscribe” button directly below the video player.
YouTube says it’s launching the new features in response to user feedback, as many people said they wanted the option to minimize distractions on videos and for it to be easier to focus on the content they’re currently watching.
As for creators, YouTube notes that they still have the option to add end screens to videos. The company expects these changes to have a minimal impact on creators’ performance and view count on the platform.
For instance, YouTube found in an experiment that giving users the option to hide end screens resulted in a less than 1.5% decrease in views from end screens. Plus, it found that less than ~0.05% of all Channel subscriptions come from the hover-to-subscribe functionality on the video watermark.
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