YouTube Shorts are getting shorter with an update that can double playback speeds.

YouTube is rolling out a series of changes to Shorts, including a new way for users to shorten the duration of short videos.

The Google-owned platform announced on Thursday that Shorts are coming with a setting that will allow users to double their playback speed. The point of making an already brief experience even more concise is to allow users to “absorb information more quickly or find their favorite parts more quickly.”

In an effort to create a more positive web experience, YouTube has also removed the Shorts Dislike button. Instead of disliking videos, users now have to use the “Not Interested” and “Don’t Recommend This Channel” features to discourage certain kinds of content.

Similarly, instead of clicking the thumbs up button, users can now access a heart emoji if they like a video.

Finally, YouTube is introducing a new “screen clear mode” designed to temporarily hide “all icons and text in playback view,” giving users a clean view of content without any floating distractions.

All of these changes were made in the service to create a “more intuitive Shorts experience,” the company said. It’s unclear when the update will take effect. The company said the feature would be rolled out over time but did not give an exact date.

TechCrunch has reached out to Google for more information.

YouTube lagged behind in the short-form video space (it launched Shorts in 2024, a few years after the launch of TikTok and Instagram Reels), but has managed to attract viewers ever since. YouTube Shorts will average 200 billion daily views as of June 2025, CEO Neal Mohan said in a Cannes keynote last year. (You can evaluate this impressive metric by considering the context that YouTube considers a ‘view’ to be the first moment a video is opened.)

A report earlier this year found that viewers are increasingly watching Shorts on their TV screens, with up to 2 billion hours of such content being consumed each month.