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YouTube now lets users hide end-of-video recommendation pop-ups
YouTube says these changes are meant to minimize distractions and help viewers focus on the content they are watching.
YouTube (christian-wiediger via Unsplash)
YouTube is introducing new features to reduce on-screen clutter, finally allowing users to hide the popular pop-up recommendations (end screens) that appear near the conclusion of videos. The company announced the change Wednesday, noting it was a response to user feedback.
Users can now tap a new “Hide” button in the top-right corner of the video player to dismiss end screens for the current video they are watching. YouTube stated that this action only hides the pop-ups for the specific video, not across the entire platform. Users can tap a "Show" button to bring them back.
The move addresses a long-standing user complaint that end screens often cover the final moments of a video, obscuring content.
In a related cleanup effort, YouTube is also removing the Subscribe button that appears when a cursor hovers over a video's branded watermark. The company explained that a dedicated Subscribe button already sits directly below the video player, making the watermark functionality redundant.
YouTube says these changes are meant to minimize distractions and help viewers focus on the content they are watching. The company expects the impact on creators to be minimal; an experiment showed giving users the option to hide end screens resulted in a less than 1.5% decrease in views from those screens. Furthermore, less than 0.05% of all Channel subscriptions come from the hover-to-subscribe watermark feature.
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