Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR YouTube is rolling out an accessibility-based feature that allows vertical Shorts videos to play in a landscape orientation.
The Rotate Shorts option changes UI elements for sideway viewing but shrinks the video so much.
This feature is likely intended for users with motor impairments or specific setups like mounted landscape-mode devices.
By design, YouTube Shorts, just like Instagram Reels and TikTok videos, are all vertical videos. They’re meant to be consumed with your phone in portrait mode, fill the entire screen, and are designed to keep you swiping and watching more. Shorts are not meant to be consumed in landscape, but YouTube is now bringing that option as an accessibility feature to its mobile app.
An option for Rotate Shorts has shown up on my Pixel 9 Pro XL under YouTube’s Settings > Accessibility. When I enabled it, I noticed that if I rotate my phone to landscape mode and I have auto-rotate on for my entire phone, the Shorts will switch to a new landscape orientation with controls on the right and a scrub bar at the bottom. The video itself, because it’s been shot in portrait, looks so tiny and so impractical to watch on a modern phone display, especially with narrow ~20:9 display ratios. Watching Shorts like this feels as pointless as watching landscape YouTube videos while holding the phone upright.
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
When I disabled the setting, Shorts remained in portrait mode. Auto-rotate didn’t affect them, and even if auto-rotate was off, I didn’t get the force-rotate button that lets me momentarily switch my display to landscape.
Because of the bad use of screen estate and the obvious mismatch between display orientation and video orientation, my Android Authority colleagues and I tried to think of why exactly this option would exist. The only explanation we came up with is that it’s billed as an accessibility feature, so it’s not meant for most users. Perhaps people with motor disabilities who can’t keep rotating their phones will find it helpful; perhaps it works for those who mount their phones in landscape to watch videos and don’t want to or can’t reach out to turn it around. Before this setting existed, it must’ve been frustrating for those users to start playing a Short and realize the orientation was fixed and the only way to watch it was to turn your head sideways.
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
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