YouTube seems to be testing out a new tweak that shows views and like counts updating in nearly real-time as you watch a video.
Over the past few months, YouTube has quietly enabled the ability for view and like counts to update as a viewer is watching a video. The change, which is seemingly being updated in real-time, updates the view and like counts every once in a while (around once a minute, it seems) with updated figures. That’s, of course, harder to see as the counts get higher, but it’s a neat change nonetheless.
We spotted one report from as far back as August 2023, while Android Police notes that it is now happening on YouTube’s Android app too.
Google actually announced this change fairly recently, but quietly. The company said in a blog post in October:
And, for new video uploads, we added a new animation that updates view count and like count in real time for the first 24 hours to show how many other users are engaging with what they’re watching.
However, it’s just now that the change actually seems to be widely rolling out.
