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mcc

In UI circles you sometimes see a (usually derogatory) label of "hover tunnel" given to a UI widget, like a clickless contextual menu, which requires you hover over an element then continue to hover over specific elements in order to keep the widget active. I would like to propose the term "Reverse Hover Tunnel" for the current YouTube front page, where you must move the mouse in strict and meticulous paths to avoid it beginning to autoplay random crap, possibly forever showing it as 10% watched
10 February at 0:46 | Open on mastodon.social
58 comments
mcc

This is a joke but I actually did catch myself doing this, carefully pixel-positioning the mouse cursor while I scrolled

10 February at 0:46 | Open on mastodon.social
Mike, First of His Name

@mcc I only recently discovered that there's an option tucked away to turn that off. I expect they'll remove that before long though.

Seems like that's the progression. Hide an option deep in settings, then use "nobody turns it off anyway" as a justification for removing it.

10 February at 0:49 | Open on social.chinwag.org
Glyph

@mike @mcc wait where is it? I’ve looked but couldn’t find it

10 February at 1:07 | Open on mastodon.social
Mike, First of His Name

@glyph @mcc I found it in my account Settings, "Playback and performance" section.

Under the Browsing heading, there's a switch for Video previews.

10 February at 1:08 | Open on social.chinwag.org
Froyok

@mike @glyph @mcc It's there to avoid auto play on mobile since you can have limited data.
It's the first thing I did when they added that annoying behavior.
Didn't know it affected the desktop version of the website as well. 🤔

10 February at 1:50 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
fabiosantoscode

@froyok @mike @glyph @mcc it could be a laptop on a metered connection. I definitely appreciate this kind of data saving feature

10 February at 9:18 | Open on mastodon.social
Alex Feinman

@mike @glyph @mcc beware that at least once it's turned itself back on for me ("teehee! oops!"), and you have to set it on each device, because of course.

10 February at 2:31 | Open on wandering.shop
xek
Daniel Casanueva

@mike @glyph @mcc Thanks! I didn't know this was an option! Turned it off immediately.

10 February at 9:09 | Open on mastodon.social
the10thwiz

@mcc I usually move my mouse to my second screen for exactly this reason.

10 February at 1:01 | Open on hachyderm.io
dAVE Inden || attks th drknss

@mcc I have done this forever now where I position my mouse in a spot where I can scroll as long as possible without triggering the autoplay. It is so frustrating to have videos just start that I haven’t told YouTube that I am thalli want to watch it.
It’s right up there with how on Apple TV Netflix will autoplay the trailer of something as you move the cursor and to make it worse it has sound. I find myself constantly swiping to keep the cursor moving to keep this from happening.

10 February at 1:06 | Open on sunny.garden
nini

@mcc i use a browser extension that hides my youtube home page entirely

it's called unhook

unhook.app/

10 February at 1:20 | Open on hachyderm.io
nini

@mcc this is a general UI problem and not just youtube-specific, but i hope this extension helps some people

10 February at 1:20 | Open on hachyderm.io
Evannakita

@filenine @mcc You can also do that just by turning off your watch history! It’s one of YouTube’s hostile techniques to try to get people to turn their watch history on, but it works great if you actually don’t want a homepage full of videos.

10 February at 3:08 | Open on mastodon.online
Chandler Carruth

@mcc I constantly do this on so many video websites these days. Even ones where I've been able to disable the auto-play because I just assume a hostile environment. :sigh:

10 February at 1:23 | Open on hachyderm.io
MountainStateNomad

@mcc

I run it along the outside edges of the main area ... More to eliminate the accidental track pad tap when I stop or start scrolling, but the autoplay is annoying too. I don't mind it on wifi, but I don't want it when using mobile data

10 February at 1:31 | Open on noauthority.social
OliverUv

@mcc oh I do this every day, it's so annoying

10 February at 1:33 | Open on mastodon.social
frykitty likes Halloween

@mcc I absolutely do this. I keep the cursor allll the way to the right.

10 February at 4:01 | Open on craftgoblin.club
groxx

@mcc I do this literally all the time. Dodging the random autoplay previews is a QoL enhancement I don't want to give up.

There are also small safe gutters on the sides, but go too far and it won't scroll any more.

10 February at 5:11 | Open on hachyderm.io
Helge Rausch
Solarbird :flag_cascadia:

@mcc move to unanimous consent

(goddamn i hate that)

10 February at 0:47 | Open on mastodon.murkworks.net
Erin
Kevin McCoy

@mcc This is the most painfully true UI commentary I've ever seen, I do this all the time.

10 February at 0:48 | Open on spacey.space
Raymond Neilson
dcbaok

@mcc there's a related concept around where you can click on the window to focus it while avoiding activating a UI element or hyperlink

10 February at 1:01 | Open on fosstodon.org
tj usiyan
Brian Moakley

@mcc I think you can shut it off.

YouTube / Profile / Settings / Playback and Performance.

In the Browsing category, there's an option for Video Previews. You can toggle it off.

No joke - that toggle has never worked for me except when I was about to write a snarky post about it.

Hopefully, it works for everyone else.

10 February at 1:08 | Open on mastodon.social
Christmas Tree

@vegetarianzombie @mcc it works for me, but there was a period of about 2 months where it would re-enable itself every week or so.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it was intentional, but it definitely felt like a low priority bug (as opposed to if it kept DISabling itself)

10 February at 2:38 | Open on mastodon.social
Brian Moakley

@christmastree @mcc Yeah, I have no faith it's a workable solution. For some reason, Google values the act of torturing their end users. :)

10 February at 3:29 | Open on mastodon.social
Allan Chow

@mcc I imagined the tune of the popcorn song traversing the safe path
youtu.be/NjxNnqTcHhg?si=ALXKvH

10 February at 1:23 | Open on fosstodon.org
ferricoxide

@mcc@mastodon.social

Or why I have to periodically go into my history to remove a bunch of videos with a few secinds' "view" time.

10 February at 1:27 | Open on evil.social
Ian Douglas Scott

@mcc "And as they passed the last of the treasonists, Dante and Virgil reached last part of the ninth circle of hell... those who committed the sin of autoplaying video."

10 February at 1:27 | Open on fosstodon.org
Rich Holmes

@mcc You know you can turn autoplay off, yes?

10 February at 1:29 | Open on vmst.io
triangulum

@mcc I feel so seen 😭

And it's a feedback loop! Mess up and hover over some clickbait, get recommended more of that next time.

10 February at 1:31 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
skry

@mcc UGH. I do this every day to avoid the fluttering crap.

It’s intrusive and rude of a user interface to animate while you’re trying to do something else.

All app UIs should have an animation-off setting, because it’s an accessibility issue as well as a strong human preference (both for and against motion).

I also want to turn off the Mastodon.social scroll-activated moving images.

10 February at 1:46 | Open on mastodon.social
Quinn9282✌️👋

@mcc I really don't understand the point of this feature at all, because realistically, you're going to click on the video to see the description or comments section anyways, so it's kind of a useless feature IMO.

You have to go into your YouTube account settings > Playback and performance, and turn off the "Video previews" option to disable the autoplaying video previews. There isn't a way to disable it while logged out, but I assume a third-party browser extension out there can do that.

10 February at 2:15 | Open on mas.to
TeflonTrout

@mcc on Android, ReVanced manager works really well to knock shit like that off, not that it helps on a PC

10 February at 2:23 | Open on mastodon.social
Kevin B

@mcc I did this too until I discovered that you can disable auto-play. I've since noticed that you can disable auto-play on the Netflix TV app, but not the Hulu app. hmm

10 February at 2:29 | Open on mastodon.social
Greg Bell
JP

@mcc when i go to youtube.com (which i guess i never do?) and hover over the video thumbnails none of them autoplay, what blesséd setting did i set and forgot that makes this so?

10 February at 2:46 | Open on mastodon.social
JP

@mcc (all i can think of is that i've set autoplay on the video player itself to off, bc i never ever want to see whatever crap yt thinks i should watch next)

10 February at 2:48 | Open on mastodon.social
mcc
Erin

@mcc @jplebreton I'm pretty sure that's not it actually; I also had autoplay off, for the same reasons, but have had the hover minefield issue for...I don't know time anymore. I'm pretty sure it's been months? And it hadn't occurred to me that there was an option to switch it off.

unless by autoplay you don't mean "pick a video at random from all of Youtube to play after the video you watched" and instead mean "allow video to start without an initial click." I do have the latter turned on

10 February at 4:18 | Open on mastodon.social
Cheeseness

@ChateauErin @mcc @jplebreton Just spotted this in settings under "Playback and performance." I appreciate that reading this conversation led to me to finding and turning that mess off
10 February at 5:54 | Open on mastodon.social
JP

@Cheeseness @ChateauErin @mcc ah, that does seem like the ticket! thanks for digging, hopefully this helps others.

10 February at 6:26 | Open on mastodon.social
Glitchy Pixel

@jplebreton @mcc
1. Click on your profile picture
2. Configuration
3. Playback and performance
4. Turn off checkbox in Browsing -> Inline playback

That should disable that "feature" :)
10 February at 2:52 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
GhostOnTheHalfShell
Mark Fischer

@mcc

And no matter how many times I turn this off in settings, it mysteriously turns it self back on every few months. Dark patterns indeed.

10 February at 3:01 | Open on indieweb.social
Pam

@mcc I think of it as “the floor is lava”

10 February at 3:05 | Open on toot.cafe
caseedo
Omega Haxors

@mcc You can disable that, and should disable that because even partially watched videos count towards your algorithm, one of many systems they've put in place to try to get people back into their right-wing radicalization pipeline.
They do something similar with shorts which is why you see so much right wing propaganda in your sub feed after viewing shorts no matter what you watched. Just click one short, then click off of it. If you accidentally scroll (and it happens a lot) delete the view.

10 February at 3:36 | Open on mastodon.social
Inder Deep Singh

@mcc that is funny and yes, seeing incomplete random videos in your watch history must be super snoring. This hover autoplay feature Is available on Chromium based browsers so not an issue for me as I use Safari.

10 February at 4:22 | Open on mastodon.social
Sarah Cederberg

@mcc Autoplay is awful and also that looks like a new legal eagle video so I know what I'm about to watch 🎉

10 February at 5:41 | Open on mozilla.social
Nfoonf

@mcc @hanhaiwen i have this wonderful hack: youtube does not give you any suggestions when you deny them permission to analyze your watch history. in fact they deactivate everything besides your subscripted channels and search. it is wonderful! it is exactly what I ever wanted!i finally beat the algorithm.
10 February at 7:08 | Open on chaos.social
Claudius

@mcc
Yeah and don't get me started on the netflix web interface 🤬
@lisamelton

10 February at 7:56 | Open on darmstadt.social
Kimiko-obasan ✨

@mcc With a graphics tablet* you can just magically teleport the cursor to wherever you want it, skip right past the boss battle to the win screen ^_^

(* pen tablet, Wacom, etc. dangit, why did they have to start calling oversized smaphos tablets? *shakes fist*)

10 February at 8:44 | Open on social.wxcafe.net
noëlle:blobbee_flag_nb:

@mcc idk im glad they finally gave us a way to watch uoutube videos

10 February at 10:12 | Open on tech.lgbt
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