The latest YouTube experiment will let you lock your touchscreen while watching videos

YouTube is testing a new experiment called “Avoid accidental taps with Lock Screen“. As the name suggests, you’ll be able to disable your device’s touch input while a video is playing so that you don’t accidentally tap another suggested video, scrub through the existing one, or pause and play it when you didn’t intend to.

This is available on Android and iOS (sorry, Chromebook tablet users, not the web app!) until July 30, 2023, after which it will disappear forever unless it was successful enough for Google to fully implement it for all users. Well, even if it’s not for all users, it will come to Premium subscribers – the very folks who can try it right now by visiting the YouTube Experiments web page and toggling it for their account.

To set it up, enable the temporary tool as mentioned above, tap the gear icon at the corner of any actively playing video, and select “Lock Screen”. Then, it will act just like an Amazon Kindle where you can tap the screen all you want, hold it with your thumb over the glass, or anything else that’s more comfortable than -the standard “oops-I-can’t-touch-the-screen-claw-grip”. Do note that this can only used when you’re in full screen mode, and I don’t see it appear for all videos yet while enabled!

I suppose it will just feel like you’re holding a physical book, only that book can move and speak instead of just being text on a page. I’m hoping this does well, because while I’ve never thought of it before, I’m really loving that someone else did. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidentally cut my video off in favor of some other one I mistakenly selected with my thumb while repositioning my phone!