YouTube Shorts just got shorter thanks to an update that lets you double the playback speed

YouTube is rolling out a series of changes to short videos, including a new way for users to shorten the length of short videos.

The platform is owned by Google Announce Thursday, the Shorts feature now comes with a setting that allows users to double the playback speed. The goal of making the already short experience more concise is to allow users to “digest information more quickly or find your favorite part faster,” the platform said.

In an apparent attempt at a more positive web, YouTube has also eliminated the dislike button for short videos. Instead of disliking a video, users will now have to rely on the “Not interested” and “I don’t recommend this channel” functions to discourage certain types of content.

Likewise, instead of tapping the thumbs-up button if they like a video, users will now have access to a heart emoji.

Finally, YouTube is also introducing a new “Clear Screen Mode,” which is designed to temporarily hide “all icons and text from the playback view,” giving users a clean view of their content without any floating distractions.

The company said all of these changes were made with the goal of creating a “more intuitive Shorts experience.” It’s not entirely clear when the updates will take effect. The company said the features will be rolled out over time, but did not specify specific dates.

TechCrunch has reached out to Google for more information.

YouTube was late to the short video space (it launched Shorts videos in 2024, several years after TikTok and Instagram Reels), but it has managed to capture an audience since then. YouTube Shorts averaged 200 billion views per day as of June 2025, CEO Neil Mohan said. he said in the keynote In Cannes last year. (We might qualify this impressive metric with the context in which… YouTube counts “views” (such as the first moment the video opens).

report earlier this year Show it Short films were increasingly watched on television – and up to 2 billion hours of this content were consumed monthly.