Earlier, many accidental taps following YouTube’s update with the progress bar, had rendered a lot of frustrative responses from users all across the globe. YouTube had to reach a remedial solution to prevent the bar from responding to these single taps, where the user had to hold and slide the finger to seek.
YouTube even had observed that it was beneficial even to avoid unwanted scrubs on Androids as well, speaking on which YouTube mentioned:
“We heard that a single tap to move the progress bar caused a lot of frustration with accidental taps. Now you can tap, hold, and slide the progress bar – the red dot will track your movement and once you lift your finger, the video will jump to that point in the video.”
However, despite the progress made by YouTube, the new update seems to be more problematic than the 2018 bugs. The sliding and seeking instead cause buffering. Therefore, it seems that the earlier frustration has manifested into a bigger problem as the complaint forum seems to be flooded with multiple complaints by users. It seems that the same task from an earlier time now requires more complexity and has become time-consuming.
Speaking on this, one of the users has commented,
Seeing that there are folk who hate losing the ability to tap and there are those who love it for preventing unwanted taps, I wish we had the option to select what we want in the settings. Instead we get this and probably a new messaging app a few months down the line.
What is more problematic is that many users with motor and cognitive disabilities have undergone several unwanted taps and situations, making it a frustrating experience. One such user has commented about it, saying,
I’m not sure why they couldn’t make this an optional setting. I have a motor disability and this is a step back in accessibility. The whole point of things like iOS AssistiveTouch (or Tasker on Android) is that you can do simple taps to simulate swipe gestures. The Accessibility setting page in YouTube only has two options, so why not use some of the wasted space to put a dozen optional settings. One of those options is the “Accessibility player”, which overlays player controls like the “Seek forward and backward 10 seconds” buttons. That way, you can just tap them once instead of double tapping. So.. YouTube Accessibility player is already promoting single taps, yet now you can’t tap to jump to a time?
There has been no response on behalf of YouTube, yet based on such a problematic user experience as of now. However, it is very clear from the multiple responses that a quick remedy is expected and implemented as soon as possible.
