Annoyed by YouTube autoplaying videos on Android? Sorry, it’s not a bug, it’s another experimental feature rowan.davies@futurenet.com (Rowan Davies) | usagoldmines.com

• Android users have noticed a test that autoplays the first video in your feed when you open the YouTube app
• Users have expressed their negative feelings online, with some sharing tips and workarounds for avoiding this
• This is another of YouTube’s recent experimental features, and follows the platform’s ‘recommended videos’ list in the app’s playback queue

Usually, when YouTube implements new experimental features, you can spot them from a mile away. However, the video platform has been quite discreet and sneaky with its latest test, and some users have noticed that it has been automatically playing the first video in their feed as they open the Android version of the app.

Over the past month or so, several Android users have reported their experiences with this strange autoplay function, and though most believed it to be a bug at first, it turns out that it’s intentional on YouTube’s part. To say people are frustrated is an understatement, and they haven’t shied away from expressing their feelings in countless Reddit threads.

Video plays when I open App from r/youtube

“I opened my YouTube app on my Samsung phone today, and it immediately started playing a video. I checked that autoplay was disabled and restarted the app, and that didn’t fix anything,” said one user on Reddit, which attracted a roster of replies from fellow Android users with the same issue.

There’s an existing YouTube feature that you can enable to automatically play videos one after the other, and this can easily be turned off in your settings, but one of the most annoying parts of YouTube’s mystery autoplay test is that it’s not as simple to avoid. Luckily, users who have been experiencing this issue have found a way to stop this by uninstalling the app’s latest update, or by clearing their data and cache.

YouTube is in an era of experimentation

It’s an interesting time for YouTube, which seems to be carrying out a new test every week. Autoplaying videos are just one of a cluster of experiments that could result in new features for the app, for better or worse.

Other recent tests point to the possible arrival of new features for YouTube Premium subscribers, including a function that allows you to control audio quality in videos, as well as a new time-saving perk that shows you recommended content directly in your playback queue. YouTube has also been testing a fix for subscriber notifications, and while this could be a blessing for users, it could be a big risk for creators.

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