Twitter is testing a way to allow you to watch YouTube videos directly from your timeline. Typically, when someone includes a YouTube link in a tweet, clicking that link takes them to YouTube, which can be frustrating if you don’t want to leave Twitter to watch the video. This new feature, which is being tested today on iOS, means that you will not be kicked out of Twitter, which will make it easier to watch a video and then continue to roll if you wish.
Twitter shared how the feature works in a GIF:
Starting today on iOS, we are testing a way to watch YouTube videos directly on the timeline of your homepage, without leaving the conversation on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/V4qzMJMEBs
– Twitter support (@TwitterSupport) March 18, 2021
The test will be available to “a very small group of users” in Canada, the United States, Japan and Saudi Arabia, Twitter said in a statement shared with The Verge after we published this story for the first time.
“The current test on iOS will be a four-week experiment,” said a Twitter spokesman. We plan to take a look at the results and scale accordingly. “
This new test comes alongside two others announced last week for iOS and Android that aim to improve media sharing and viewing on the social network. A test adds a preview of the “what you see is what you get” image in the tweet’s composer, which means that the images appear on your timeline in the same way as when you are composing a tweet. The company is also testing ways to upload and view 4K images on mobile.
March 18 update, 2:56 pm ET: Added Twitter information.