World
India
Sat down to watch YouTube while eating, but don’t know what to watch exactly? Don’t worry; YouTube is trying out a new feature that should make its mobile app experience better. It will help users quickly find things to watch without having to search or scroll.
A new “Play Something” feature is currently available in beta to Android users with version 19.5 of the YouTube app, letting users tap a button and start watching a video based on their preferences right away.
About the Play Something button
The “Play Something” button is a floating action button that appears above the home tab of the app, which supplants the minimized video player when opening the app. When tapped, it plays a video selected by YouTube’s algorithm that considers the user’s viewing history. The video plays in portrait orientation, much like YouTube Shorts, but it’s not limited to Shorts and can also play regular YouTube videos.
The video controls are now simple and appear on the screen. There are big buttons—like, Dislike, Comment, and Share—towards the right of the video player, while the timeline scrubber is below. However, if a minimized video player is active, the “Play Something” button is unavailable.
This feature is meant to help the user, who may not know what to watch. Rather than endless scrolling or searching, a tap of the button allows users to jump into content. It makes it easy to consume content because videos that suit a user’s preferences are suggested, and there is no need for active decision-making.
The “Play Something” button is designed to make the experience seamless, but it also happens to be a great way to encourage spur-of-the-moment content discoveries. Videos are chosen based on one’s viewing history, ensuring that the content is relevant to their tastes. It is a feature that should be widely available in months to come, once testing is complete.
YouTube’s AI-driven features
Apart from that, YouTube also includes features focusing on further user experience improvements as well as creator tool improvement. Some of such features added are AI-driven “restyle” features of the YouTube Shorts that can allow the users to redesign any licensed audio into any unique 30-second-long sounds using their YouTube accounts, currently only to a restricted list of creators, which will soon reach wider availability after launching their initiative, known as Dream Track.
As YouTube continues to innovate with new features like AI-powered auto-dubbing, vertical scroll gestures, and others, it is apparent that the platform is working on enhancing the overall experience for users by making content discovery more personalized and engaging.
The “Play Something” feature, for instance, is a testament to YouTube’s efforts at improving user experience by eliminating barriers to content discovery and promoting more spontaneous consumption of videos. With its wider release expected in the coming months, YouTube will likely continue adding new features to enhance user engagement and make navigation on the platform simpler.
ALSO READ: Tech companies face tough AI copyright questions in 2025
