YouTube is testing full video playback from your homepage.
YouTube on mobile appears to be testing full video playback with some video controls from your homepage, which expands upon the basic autoplay feature that is already available.
Some YouTube users are reporting the change, which adds two new buttons and a scrollable playback progress bar to any and all autoplay videos. This expands upon the captions and playback indicator that have been there for a little while already now.
So, how will it help?
Instead of having to expand a video to have it play with sound and enhanced controls, this move lets you quickly toggle audio, and the regular progress bar even allows you to scroll to specific points within a said content. The audio and caption toggles are persistent, allowing you to activate/deactivate as you see fit.
We don’t know if scrolling beyond a video you spotted on your YouTube homepage, having it initiate full video playback and then scrolling back to it, will retain any viewing progress you have made. However, the current autoplay feature ordinarily restarts any video on your YouTube homepage. We’d wager this will be retained here, but the progress bar can be scrubbed to a specific point in a video far more easily.
In all likelihood, this could very well be an A/B test and full video playback for content on your YouTube homepage might not be available to you at any point. We’re also not sure just how useful this will be unless it helps surface new content and creators.