Let’s say you’re curled up on the couch for a cozy evening, grab your Android TV remote and turn on YouTube. A perfectly acceptable entertainment option in 2021. But suggestions of TikTok complexity, pressure washers and a lot of hesitation between five-year-old Conan clips, one of which started a TikToker. to scream What’s going on with you? You can join YouTube’s latest test of introducing autoplay video previews for Android TV.
When this new ‘feature’ is enabled, the video you highlight on the YouTube Android TV home screen or subscription view will start playing ( Nine to five Google) after an interval of about 3 seconds. It can easily surprise you, especially if you turn up the volume and don’t expect it. The video gradually lowers the volume and plays for a while before stopping. It cannot be said why there was not such a gradual increase earlier.
If you’re not the biggest fan of this behavior (and maybe it’s hurting your feelings a bit), the good news is that you can easily disable it. If you go to YouTube settings, you’ll find a nice “Preview with sound” toggle. Turning it off not only mutes the audio, but restores the foreground to the previous slideshow format (it starts immediately, not after a 3 second delay).
In fact there may be people who fear silence and welcome the existence of a noisy YouTube homepage full of life scenes. The rest will be watching to see if the test spreads to more users, and we hope Google doesn’t back away from the ability to shut down the test.
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