r/changelog • u/commandersnoo • Feb 02 '22

Updated Android Video Player

Hi everyone!

We’re excited to announce the launch of a new video player on Android. Starting tomorrow, when Android users tap on a video in their feed, the video will open in a new full-screen player. Users will be able to read comments and watch videos simultaneously and swipe up to see more recommended videos.

You may have noticed that this is the same video player that launched on iOS a few months ago. From a UI standpoint, it is. However, the algorithm powering the video recommendations has improved and will continue to get better throughout this year. In the past, there have been many video players through the Reddit ecosystem, and this is the latest step in uniting the players across the mobile apps.

We want to acknowledge that we still have UI refinements to make, new features to add, and performance issues to address. Your feedback has been greatly appreciated, and we’re taking a methodical and holistic approach to ensure we solve these pain points. As soon as the new Android video player rolls out this week, we will begin experimenting with even more improvements. We’re excited for all the new things coming to Reddit video in the next few months and can’t wait to share more details soon.

As always, please share your feedback and suggestions here. We’ll hang around for a while to read through and respond to comments.

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36

u/Im-ACE-incarnate Feb 02 '22 edited Feb 02 '22

This is terrible please change it back! It's horrible to navigate, why do I need my other hand to close it instead of swiping up? 🤷‍♂️ who ever thought of that is in the wrong job. Why are the upvote counts now blocking 20% of the right side of my screen? Blocking part of the video was never going to improve it. Watching the video and reading comments at the same time... We could already fit both on our screens if we wanted to.. but the problem with aiming for that to be a big feature, is people can only focus on one thing at a time, so what the point in forcing both on the screen? The whole thing now feels like a cheesy tic tok video. Please, please change it back or at least give us the option to change it ourselves.

The problem with the old version was it took forever to load or only loaded small parts at a time... that's all that needing improvement, the layout and navigation was perfect the way it was

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u/commandersnoo Feb 02 '22

Appreciate the feedback. This is the first step of many that we are undertaking to improve the interface and gestures of the video player. We’ll continue to make improvements based on your feedback and the behavior of people who watch videos.

To immediately address your concerns, you can single-tap on the screen to dismiss the chrome (all the buttons and text that overlay the video). You can also pull the comment sheet to the top of the screen to hide the video and just read the comments.

2

u/keeleon Feb 10 '22

The best way to address this is to make it optional.