YouTube is bringing its short-form video offering, YouTube Shorts, to TV screens.
Beginning on Monday, users can watch Shorts content — up to 60 seconds long — on YouTube’s TV apps across smart TVs (released in 2019 or later), gaming consoles and streaming devices. To translate vertical, mobile-first content for larger TV screens, YouTube has adjusted the design to include a white border around each video and a blurred, color-sampled background to expand across the entire screen, according to a blog post written by Brynn Evans, the UX director for YouTube’s TV app, and Melanie Fitzgerald, the UX director for YouTube Community and Shorts.
Users will also use their remotes or controllers to scroll their videos, similar to the mobile experience, and can “like” or “dislike” a video and subscriber to the creator from the TV viewing experience, though the executives said they expect to add additional features in the future.
In an editor’s note ahead of the blog post, Neal Mohan, YouTube’s chief product officer, described the move to TV as a “natural next step” for YouTube Shorts, which the company says are being watched by more than 1.5 billion YouTube users every month.
The expansion to TV follows similar efforts from TikTok, which first launched a TV app on Amazon Fire TV last November and is available on other smart TVs and connected streaming devices from Google, Samsung, LG and Vizio.
[embedded content]