Changes to Googles Youtube for IOS, and how to use it with voiceover.

Youtube was recently updated, and several voiceover changes were put in. At first, you may do what I did. "oh, damn, it, google, stop, breaking, things!!!" It turns out that google actually fixed a lot of things in this version, making the user experience more streamlined and much more efficient. They did seem to break one thing though.

The story about the video player

In this update, you will find the traditional video player, and below it the video title. It used to be there was a more actions button near there, and there was also a button for expand description. All of that is gone. instead, you'll notice voiceover says "actions available" just like home screen or mail or a lot of other IOS apps. The available actions are as follows, as tested on a video by sciShow space.

  • Activate item <default> (Likes the current video, there is no way the user would know this without trying it out for themselves)
  • More actions: Expands the options for share, and add to list.
  • Subscribe
  • [If subscribed to current channel]: send me /stop sending me, every notification for this channel.

Now, flicking left/right will bypass everything that used to be there, allowing yourself the ability to more efficiently move by flicking through the app. This is great. They've also now changed the like/unlike. To like a video, press the default action, this seems to like the video. Or flick down to more actions, and you may see numbers like 8k and 2k. The first is like and the second is dislike (I think). They aren't currently labelled with like or dislike. There's also a handy share button. The only thing missing is a way to view the video description. There may be features I don't know about missing though.

The videos view

The videos view used to suck. You flicked right and it said "more actions" and other things. Now, simply flicking right sends you to the next available video. Again, you can flick down or up herte to do the following:

  • "Activate item" <plays the video>
  • More actions, <Bring up a flyout allowing you to  do these things:
    • Express you aren't interested in seeing this video ever again.
    • add to watch later.
    • add to playlist.
    • share ...
    • cancel <can be activated by scrubbing as well>

This enhancement is really a nice move by google, I'm glad to see this. It was confusing at first, because I didn't realize this had changed, but now that I figured it out, it's quite welcoming.