YouTube is trialling a feature that will allow users to ‘pinch and zoom’ in on a video, similar to how you can on an Instagram post.
The feature, brought to our attention by 9to5Google, allows ‘premium’ YouTube subscribers to zoom into a video on-screen, even in landscape mode.
As explained by YouTube, to use pinch and zoom, the user can simply “Pinch the video player with two fingers to zoom in and out”.
Rather than filling your screen, pinch to zoom allows you to use two fingers to zoom into the video player. Once zoomed in, as the report explains, you can move around and look at parts of the video closer.
It will be available until September 1 for testing by premium users – a little under a month for the platform to get its ducks in a row and potentially roll it out across its userbase.
If you’re a YouTube Premium subscriber, you can find the new zoom feature by heading to the settings menu (either on your phone or desktop browser). The feature is under the “try new features” section.
YouTube Premium is a solid option if you want to pay to skip through its often harrowing advertising. But it’s $14.99 a month, with a 30-day free trial also available. A student plan will set you back $8.99 a month and a family plan will cost $22.99 a month. With family, you can add up to five users. The price includes access to YouTube Music, offline downloads and background playback.
But for everyone else who doesn’t want those extras, we’ll just have to hope pinch and zoom eventually makes its way down to the free, ad-riddled version of YouTube.