Last month, YouTube sort of allowed users to block Shorts from the feed. There’s a new zero-minute time limit for Shorts in the Time Management setting. While this came as positive news for those who consciously want to cut down on spending time on short-form content and be productive, the latest news takes things in a completely different direction. It seems YouTube is putting more effort into making Shorts content more immersive with the “Clear Screen” feature.
YouTube is reportedly testing a new ‘Clear Screen’ feature for Shorts
YouTube may have started testing a new Instagram-style distraction-free viewing for Shorts. For some context, when you play a Shorts video on YouTube, there are various action buttons, including like, dislike, comments, share, and more. Then there’s the username of the channel and the caption at the bottom. All these occupy a good portion of the screen.
For a long time, users have apparently been complaining about how distracting this is on platforms like Reddit. It seems Google wants to address this finally. Radu Oncescu, an app researcher, has spotted that YouTube is testing a new option called “Clear Screen” in the Shorts viewer menu.
The feature is not available to everyone yet
The diagonal outward arrow icon (from the screenshot above) next to the “Clear Screen” feature suggests that it will allow users to switch to full screen for a distraction-free Shorts viewing experience. This should technically remove all action buttons and let you focus on the content. For what it’s worth, Instagram and TikTok already have this option. On Instagram Reels, clicking the “View fullscreen” option removes all action buttons from the screen.
YouTube’s “Clear Screen” feature is not available to everyone yet. It seems to be in the final stages of development. While the rollout timeline is not clear at the moment, we’ll update if and when that happens.
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