YouTube keeps the updates rolling in.
YouTube launched a new update to its website two days ago allowing users to browse while watching a video at the same time. Now, the video platform is quietly rolling out another major update to the offsite YouTube experience.
The video giant is finally giving its embedded player a major overhaul — making it easier for people to subscribe to channels from embedded videos.
Now, when you come across a YouTube video embedded on a website, you will see the channel's avatar on the top left corner, next to the title of the video on the thumbnail image. Hovering over the channel image reveals the channel's name, subscriber count, as well as a new actionable "subscribe" button. You can also click on the channel image to open its YouTube channel page in a new window. These changes were first pointed out by 9to5Google.
Mashable has confirmed that this new feature began quietly rolling out across YouTube video embeds two weeks ago. The update was designed to provide more context about the video being watched.
YouTube videos embedded on a third-party's website had long been void of any additional information. You may not have even realized it, but shockingly before this update, video embeds simply displayed the video's title without any information about the channel or creator who uploaded it.
On its surface, this update may seem like a small change, but in action, it makes it much easier for channel creators and YouTube personalities to grow their subscriber base.
All viewers have to do is hover over the channel avatar, and as long as they're logged into their YouTube account, they can click the "subscribe" button from the pop-up menu that appears. The viewer would then be subscribed to the video uploader's channel without ever having to even leave the website or post where the video is embedded on. So, next time you see a YouTube video embedded on one of your favorite websites, do the uploader a favor, and smash that subscribe button.