YouTube Rolling Out Sharing, Messaging Features For Web Platform

YouTube’s sharing and messaging features appear to be rolling out to users on the web. The sharing and messaging features were originally mobile-only features available on the Android and iOS YouTube apps.

The new sharing icon, which was first discovered by Android Police, appears on the YouTube title bar right in the middle of the notification and YouTube apps icons. Clicking on it will open the user’s existing YouTube messages inbox. If users click on one of the messages, the selected conversation will float down to the bottom of the screen. Users will be able to scroll through their previous conversations and shared videos and start chatting with their friends.

Another change in YouTube’s web platform is the new user interface when sharing a video. When users click on the share button below the video they’re watching, a window will pop up. This pop-up window will include the user’s recent contacts, different embedding and social media places to share and the actual link of the YouTube video.

The changes in YouTube doesn’t seem to be appearing for everyone just yet, so it’s possible that this might just be a server-side test. Another possibility here is that Google may be slowly rolling this out to everyone. It’s likely that it might appear for everyone within a week, as speculated by Android Authority.

Sharing and messaging on YouTube were tested for many months last year when they were made available in Canada. The two became official features on the YouTube Android and iOS apps in August 2017.

These changes should make a lot of users happy, especially those who share a lot of YouTube videos with their friends. Users will no longer have to jump between their desktop computer to their mobile device when they want to share and talk about a YouTube video with their friends.