Ask HN: New YouTube hover feature? Does anyone else find this annoying?

Do they actually do any user testing before launching a feature? Or did someone important at YouTube think it was a cool idea and greenlighted it.

How about doing a poll before a video asking people if they like the feature? If they answer no then ask if they'd like it turned off? Beats moving on to the next new feature.

For me the delay on the home screen is long enough that I don't do it accidentally. It happens when I search as well and it's really useful when seeing if it's what I am looking for. I appreciate that it's muted. I have gotten used to resting the mouse cursor outside the thumbnail. I guess I changed my behavior without realizing, I can't remember when that feature was enabled for me.

I personally find it useful as long as the video stays muted while autoplaying. I love the mobile search even more where the subtitles on videos work in preview mode, I wish that feature was brought to desktop.

There is a "Send feedback" option in the sidebar. I am unsure if you need to be logged in to see it, I don't think so because YouTube in incognito has the the option send it too. I recommend you send feedback.

I used to live by the subscriptions page, but for some reason interesting channel recommendations have been sneaking onto the home page for me.

YouTube still doesn't quite understand that if I happen to watch one video about cats, or a fish tank, that that doesn't mean it should suddenly show me only videos about those. Or that there's a large subset of videos that I don't really need to see today, since I just watched them yesterday (already discussed in a HN thread last week, IIRC).

So given that, you may want to give it another chance. Definitely set your expectations low.

Oh god, those are the worst. Often you will be trying to watch the end of the video and you can't because they obscure text or other crucial images. Seriously, who at Youtube decided this was a good idea?