YouTube has rolled out a new auto-zoom feature in YouTube Android App and it doesn’t seem to have received well amongst users due to the fact that the company hasn’t given an option to turn off the feature. Furthermore, the feature also doesn’t seem to work on all the videos.
The feature began rolling out 3 to 4 days back when we also noticed it on our handsets. The new auto-zoom feature in YouTube Android app basically zooms in the video screen to fill the screen and hide the side bars in videos which are in a different aspect ratio than the phone’s screen. This feature was earlier handled manually by the user where one could pinch out to zoom in the video player.
While the manual method is still present, the auto-zoom feature in YouTube Android app seems to be annoying users who don’t prefer to zoom the player to fill the screen. Moreover, during our testing, we could observe that the feature also doesn’t work on all the videos and we couldn’t figure out a criteria for it to work.
Read More: YouTube Trending Page To Be Replaced By YouTube Charts & Recommendations
Once the feature works, you’d notice a pill at the top-centre of the screen stating auto-zoom or “100%”, where the latter refers to the default aspect ratio. The auto-zoom slowly zooms in the video screen, and posts on Google’s support page and on X, suggest that users want it turned off.
Some users are mistakenly confusing the auto-zoom feature with the “Zoom to fill screen” option in the YouTube app settings, but the two serve different purposes. “Zoom to fill screen” always enlarges the video to fit the display, cropping the edges. In contrast, auto-zoom activates after the video starts playing and only works on select videos, dynamically adjusting the frame to better suit the screen.
As of now, there’s no way to turn off the feature but considering the strong feedback YouTube is receiving, we think it will respond soon.