You’ll soon be able to mindlessly scroll through YouTube Shorts on your living room TV

Google’s “Shorts” have done anything but fall short of the company’s expectations. In the time since the feature has been released, it’s amassed 30 billion daily views in an effort to compete with TikTok, Instagram and Facebook Reels, and so on. The jury is still out on how badly placing Shorts on your main YouTube channel harms your chances with the algorithm, but they’re immensely popular nonetheless.

In a recent report from Protocol, Google has told its hardware partners that it wants to add support for short-form video content on Android TV and Google TV. Before you even ask, yes, I do think it will be strange to watch vertical video on your horizontal television, but it is what it is, I guess.

Here’s an example above of what it may end up looking like. As you can see, the Short’s title, the creator, and a rating system in the forms of a thumbs up and down appear to the right of the video. There’s also a three-dots “more” options menu that will hold other settings pertaining to that Short.

In addition to this update, the YouTube app on smart TVs will gain improved support for split-screen viewing for YouTube TV, and “better support” for YouTube Music. For now, we have no idea what is being alluded to with these details, but a Google representative refused to give Protocol any more information.

Lastly, YouTube TV is reportedly getting a “mosaic mode”, allowing you to watch four live videos simultaneously (in quadrants), but I can’t imagine why on Earth you’d want to do such a thing. The provided screenshot was leaked to Protocol, and we’ll update this article when Google releases an official statement and includes official press images of Shorts on TVs. Let me know in the comments if you think you’ll even watch them on the big screen, or if you’d prefer to scroll through them mindlessly on your phone as you fall asleep at night.