In the past, many viewers on YouTube were troubled by the ending screen being obscured by recommended videos and subscription prompts before the video even finished playing. While these design features helped creators increase views and subscriptions, they became distracting for many users who simply wanted to watch the entire video.
In response to such problems, YouTube finallyPropose improvement measuresBy adding a "hide" button, viewers can manually close the suggestions and pop-ups at the end of the video.
The new feature has been gradually launched on the web and mobile interfaces. When users find recommended video prompts or other prompts at the end of the video, they can immediately hide these prompts by clicking the "Hide" button in the upper right corner of the player.
However, it should be noted that this setting only applies to the currently playing video. If the pop-up window appears again when the next video is played, the user will still need to click to hide it again. In other words, YouTube does not provide an option to completely turn off recommendation prompts at once, but instead maintains a "per-video control" level, presumably to ensure that the overall video playback volume is increased.
Although the design is a bit cumbersome, it is still a big improvement for viewers. YouTube said that this adjustment is in response to feedback from community users and is aimed at allowing viewers to "focus on the content they are watching" instead of being distracted by too many interruptions.
In addition to adding hidden features, YouTube has also made adjustments to its desktop interface. Previously, a "Subscribe" button would automatically appear when hovering the mouse cursor over a video's watermark. This has now been removed. Officials explained that because the video playback page already has a clear subscribe button, adding an additional prompt to the watermark would be considered "duplicative functionality."
Official data suggests these changes have had a limited impact on creators. YouTube emphasized that allowing users to hide the ending prompt affected less than 1.5% of views from the ending screen, while removing the subscription prompt from the watermark only impacted around 0.05% of overall subscription sources.
