YouTube Pinch-To-Zoom Functionality Broken Across All Phones

Updated on

A couple of months ago, YouTube released a “pinch-to-zoom” feature designed for smartphones with an 18:9 aspect ratio. Many users are now reporting issues with this functionality, across a wide range of phones.

The pinch-to-zoom problems don’t seem isolated to any phone or manufacturer, seeming to indicate that the problem is on YouTube’s end rather than a problem with any one phone itself. Piunikaweb reports that the majority of problems have been reported from the Samsung Note 8, Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, One Plus 5T, Pixel 2 XL, LG V30, and Huawei Mate 10 Pro. It’s easy to see that the pinch-to-zoom problems are widespread without any common ground outside of the YouTube app, clearly making it a problem that needs attention from Google to address.

Listed below are some user comments about the pinch-to-zoom feature issues

“After a YouTube update that option doesn’t work anymore on my Galaxy S8, I am not only one, other users are complaining too, can you please fix this? I miss that option.”

“The pinch to zoom option in the YouTube app is no longer working on my Note 8. Anyone knows what I should do? I went as far as deleting the cache partition and the app cache, and after that it worked for like 1 day.”

“I have a Galaxy S8 and out of nowhere the pinch to zoom on my YouTube stopped working. I deleted and disabled the app multiple times and it still doesn’t work and I even uninstalled upsets and my screen is not cracked or broken.”

The problem seems to occur even when the phone is started in Safe Mode. Google hasn’t come forward with an official statement regarding the issue, but a moderator on the Samsung Community suggested

“Out of curiosity, has anyone reached out to YouTube support to see if it’s something on their side? Since it appears that their update might have broken their own app feature, then they should be able to patch a new update to fix it back up too! ^_^”

Although Google generally has a reputation for high-quality products and services, every update to any app has the possibility of causing more problems than it fixes. Software development is incredibly complicated, and even with the most stringent testing, it’s always possible that a problem will slip through the cracks – or even be created by fixes to other features.

Google has been on the receiving end of some negative PR recently after the launch of their Pixel 2 had a number of issues that still haven’t all been ironed out. While a problem with the pinch-to-zoom functionality isn’t nearly as severe as some of the problems we’re seeing with their new cell phone, it’s still a problem that needs to be addressed in order to restore the YouTube app to its full functionality. As the problem is occurring across multiple phones, it’s pretty clear that Google themselves broke something with a recent update.

Given the widespread issues with the YouTube pinch-to-zoom feature, we certainly hope that Google takes action to address the issue sooner rather than later.

Leave a Comment