YouTube Shorts are Coming to TV

YouTube announced that it will be expanding the reach of its TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts. Shorts will now be available on smart TVs in an experience that is designed to feel more consistent with what users see on mobile.

This was a challenge given that YouTube Shorts, like TikTok, were largely meant to be watched on smaller smartphone screens.

The new Shorts-watching feature will require a smart TV from 2019 or later, a newer gaming console or a streaming device, YouTube says. The videos themselves can be found on the new Shorts shelf on the homepage of the YouTube app or on a creator’s channel page.

In a blog post, the company detailed the different design experiments it researched in coming up with the final concept for Shorts on TV. It found Shorts videos didn’t look great in the YouTube app’s conventional video player, which had to be reconfigured to work with the new format. The solution was to create a custom player specifically for Shorts that would be more visually appealing and easy to use.

YouTube is hoping that by making Shorts more widely available, it will attract more users and creators to the platform. This would help YouTube better compete with TikTok, which has been growing in popularity. YouTube has been trying to catch up to TikTok in recent months and has been rolling out new features to make its app more competitive.

Do you use YouTube Shorts? What do you think of the new update? Let us know in the comments!