YouTube’s Live streams always seemed hidden away, and it was never obvious that your favourite creator was streaming unless you enabled notifications. YouTube appears to be aware of the issue, and as the platform attempts to make people spend more time on the platform, it will now add red rings around the creator’s profile images and say when a person is streaming on YouTube. This comes after YouTube recently tweaked the user interface when watching videos in landscape.

To help viewers find livestreams, YouTube will add a ring around the channel avatar and highlight it in YouTube’s red color, and say “LIVE” (via 9to5Google). The new feature is expected to help people find new channels and livestreams that might be interesting. Once the channel avatar is tapped on by the user, it will take them directly to the livestream where they can catch up and watch the show.

The new feature was announced by Neal Mohan, the Chief Product Officer at YouTube.

https://twitter.com/nealmohan/status/1494752348895432713?

The decision to add the red rings around channel avatars isn’t surprising, given that other platforms such as Twitter, TikTok, and many other popular services had the same implementation for a long time, and it has proven to increase engagement and help people discover new content. The new user interface design only appears to roll out for mobile, but it will likely also expand across the web.

Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, recently shared some impressive numbers on how well ‘YouTube Shorts’ are doing and hint that the video platform may soon offer NFT features on the platform to help creators monetize their content and channel. YouTube also announced that it would stop making YouTube Original Shows not that long ago to help fund YouTube Kids Fun, and the Black Voices Fund, programs that were created back in 2020.

Do you use YouTube for live streaming, or do you prefer TikTok, Instagram, or Twitch? Let us know in the comments below!