this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
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Why is there no seekbar and why can you only pause?

Why does scrolling up or down on the mouse wheel bring up another video?

Why is it siloed off into its own thing anyway? They're just short videos.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is an oddly specific issue, but I like really zooming in when writing a comment, right? I feel like it helps me concentrate. And so, when watching YT shorts on my PC, I'm constantly accidentally going to the previous or next short, when I'm just trying to adjust my zoom a little... Thereby deleting my whole comment!

Like, it would be so ridiculously easy to implement if nothing else a warning that says, "Are you sure you want to go to the next video? Your comment will be lost!"

But alas.

And the lack of a seekbar on YouTube shorts annoys the Hell out of me, too. The intent with that is obviously so that you're forced to watch through the whole video instead of being able to skip ahead, and then if there's a thing earlier in the video that you want to go back to, you have to rewatch that. It's 100% just a way to forcefully increase watch time at the cost of user experience, but oh, it's so Sleek™ to avoid all the clutter of a user interface that lets you actually do stuff...

...The secret, by the way, is to replace shorts/ in the URL with watch?v=. This lets you watch YouTube shorts as just normal YouTube videos with the same interface and layout you're already used to.

Why is it siloed off into its own thing anyway?

You know darn well why, my friend: YouTube's trying to make a knockoff TikTok, and if TikTok does the scrolling videos thing, then YouTube must, too. Because obviously we couldn't have one app that does one format well and another that does another well — YouTube won't stop at anything short of total domination of online video streaming!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

...The secret, by the way, is to replace shorts/ in the URL with watch?v=. This lets you watch YouTube shorts as just normal YouTube videos with the same interface and layout you're already used to.

thanks. this is very helpful.

i can't stand the shorts format. it's like they took all the things about tiktok that make sigh when my sister sends me a tiktok link, and inserted all those bad UX concepts* into youtube.

i prefer to watch stuff on a desktop instead of the phone, especially when watching junk on the phone tries to completely hijack the phone interface. like every once in a while i have to open the YT app to get the link so i can paste it into newpipe and it reminds me why i hate the YT app even when it doesn't play ads.

*bad UX concepts

  • autoplay
  • autoplay content behind popup
  • thumb scrolling instantly starts new content
  • force closing the app sometimes leaves the sound running
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I love starting a video and setting my phone down to start making dinner but my palm accidentally brushes against another thumbnail on the way down and some other video starts playing

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

But Google, this shit won't kill off TikTok, the US government will

Also- I wonder if there's a script to automatically redirect YT Shorts URLs to the regular format 🤔

Edit: Already found a FF addon

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Already found a FF addon

Poggers, I'll have to look into that

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

because shorts are a stupid idea

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This isn't really a solution, but you can just change the "shorts" to "watch" in the url and you'll get the original youtube player

E: Oh, Erika3sis already said this

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It's designed almost exclusively for mobile with desktop as an afterthought.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Isn't this all just due to YT copying tiktok? I haven't used tiktok personally, but every time someone tries to show me one I have to wait for it to come back around to the beginning, so I assumed there was no seekbar