YouTube on desktop gains pop-out preview player on Home feed

Likely to help surface new content to users, the desktop version of YouTube is now showing a pop-out video preview player when hovering over on-site content. We’re not entirely sure when this change arose, but in a similar manner to that of the YouTube mobile app you’ll now get a pop-out preview player that will begin playing videos in their entirety when you hover your mouse cursor over video thumbnails. Previously this would only show a silent looping gif of the video in question, but thanks to this change videos are given far greater prominence. Not only that, but you also have the ability to toggle this mini-player volume and any associated video captions. There’s also the ability to “Watch later” or “Add to queue” along with the expanded three-dot menu that gives further options. You can even scrub through the content, effectively allowing you to watch videos without ever leaving your Home feed. YouTube videos will keep playing in the background on started via this new pop-out preview player, that is so long as you don’t hover over another video and initiate playback. It’s a nice addition, but one that might not necessarily be useful in every instance. You…
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