Instagram tests Reels pause feature as TikTok remains in limbo | Hacker News Reader

Instagram tests Reels pause feature as TikTok remains in limbo

cnbc.com

17 pointsgrajaganDev41 comments

Letting users pause a Reels video. Hard to believe this wasn't case all along.

This is user hostile:

"Previously, users have only been able to pause videos on Instagram Reels by tapping and holding on their screen."

In TikTok holding the screen causes it to play at 2x, they should probably reuse the same gesture to make user adoption smoother.

But still... A feature announcement for a fucking pause button is deranged.

With enough 200k/year engineers, perhaps one day Instagram will build a video player _almost_ as good as Youtube was in 2006.

Nah, being unable to pause just means they get way more minutes of viewing when people put down their phone to do something. It just sits there and plays, earning that sweet sweet ad money.

I've always found this weird - when I put my phone down I hit the power button to turn the screen off/lock it.

This might not always stop playback, for example with YT Premium, I think it also applies to shorts, maybe only when in PiP mode? I can't recall, but I'm pretty sure, I've encountered it, somewhat inconsistently

YouTube Shorts don’t have background play/PiP, at least not through the regular Shorts player. It is possible to get a Short pulled up through the main video player because each Short actually has a page you can access by just replacing /short/ with /v/ in the URL, and that will have background play and PiP if you have these enabled.

Tapping some URLs will inconsistently get you to the page too without having to do any URL replacement. I don’t think there’s any intended logic there, just some bugs in the way URLs get handled hopping from social media app to browser to social media app since most of them try to keep you silo’d in.

I can get PiP from shorts 100% just tested it (At least in MIUI, maybe it depends on the implementation)

What you're describing is a bit different(It's probably implemented like this because old videos that weren't initially uploaded as shorts were absorbed into shorts if they fit the correct criteria)

Is MIUI Xiaomi’s fork of Android or something else? I had to look it up so I’m half guessing here, but what I wrote is for iPhones and iPads. I don’t know how different YouTube is on Android but it was my impression they kept the implementations pretty close to feature and behavioral parity, but I haven’t used an Android phone full time in almost 8 years.

Yes, Xiaomi's layer on top of Android (Wouldn't call it a fork though, that has different implications)

As far as I can tell YouTube itself tends to be pretty similar, but features come first for Android, I think PiP for shorts is out of beta in Android, but as you mentioned just getting tested on iOS

Got it. Thanks! I’ll try to keep that in mind going forward.

I think YouTube just added shorts pip on iOS as an experiment in premium.

That’s neat. Not sure it’s offered to me but I’ll look for the experiment. I like to double check software behaviors when I write comments like the one above, and I was lamenting behind the scenes that actually, I would like Shorts to have PiP. I didn’t used to want that, but PiP has grown on me.

> I like to double check software behaviors when I write comments like the one above

I commend this level of diligence! The feature is only 2 weeks old: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/new-youtube-premium-fea...

Had to manually go to the App Store and update the apps so it took some doing even after opting in but I managed to get this working on my iPhone and iPad. It's only till March 5th though, but usually the more popular experiments end up becoming features later so hopefully they cement it in! Thanks!

Even Youtube can't figure that one out

the goal is to force behavior onto users like Pavlov's dogs using B. F. Skinner Psychology

Pause and rewind have been features since the phonograph. Vinyl and tapes could do it. Youtube did it (yet somehow they botched it for YT Shorts). Tiktok did it. Now Instagram feels like they invented something...

On the web YouTube, one can change the /shorts/ in the URL to /v/ to get the standard and not the "This is a TikTok-clone" interface.

On Android one can install NewPipe and have a better experience (then again, yesterday NewPipe failed to load any video for me, I guess YouTube updated their obfuscation code).

I'd always assumed these anti-features were intentional. For example, making it hard to pause reels causes them to roll over to the advert reel which is inserted between every two reels.

Par for the course, really. Still can't zoom into images on Instagram, can you?

The one and only supported image resolution is also lower than any of the screens I use.

The app is really hard to believe from a technical perspective, in general.

You can pinch-zoom on mobile, but only while you're holding it down. I suspect again this is intentional and the two go together - they don't want you zooming in on limited resolution images, that'll look even worse.

This is a relatively recent feature. And yes, it is almost certainly because the images are awful quality before zooming in, so they want to limit how obvious this is.

You can’t fast-forward/scroll any video in Instagram and it is by design. To get users stay on the platform as long as possible. And it works.

hm? Just drag the white bar at the bottom of the video

Curiously some Reels videos don't have this white bar. Nor do "Story" (i.e. the "we stole this from Snapchat" ephemeral content) videos.

Also it's possible to add videos as a "post" (the OG data model), and they're not reels, and these don't seem to have scrolling capability.

Gotta love the "Let's just throw a bunch of crap onto this thing" architectural design. I remember when Reels (the part that is full of reposted TikTok videos and girls in skimpy clothes advertising their OnlyFans) was called IGTV...

I'm pretty sure this is length based, other products don't let you scrub on shorts that are too short

infinitely worse than tiktoks design.

Trying to use Reels after experiencing the (superior) UX of TikTok was hard enough, but trying to use Reels after experiencing the UX of XHS is pretty much impossible for me.

What's XHS?

Xiaohingshu AKA Rednote

I have an userscript installed that turns the instagram video player into a regular html one, so in case I end up clicking an instagram link, I don't go insane while trying to watch something.

Same. Mine also Auto-Pauses video at the start.

I have that for youtube shorts.

Seeing them turned into regular videos shows how ridiculously stupid their format and user experience is.

Am I missing something or hallucinating? Pretty sure I've always been able to pause reels on desktop and mobile. Instagram Lite lacked this functionality.

Lack of a progress bar you can skip through is what's been missing compared to TikTok.

Or was this just not a thing for US users specifically?

I also had this some time ago and then it was gone. Maybe just A/B testing?

Yup, noticed I had it come n go over last year

I've only been able to pause by tapping and holding on the screen. And that only pauses while you keep holding. Also, for me, most reels have a progress bar you can drag around at the bottom, but there are some that just don't for whatever reason.

I've almost stopped using Instagram, these days I get ads that block scrolling on pictures or stories, it's simply not enjoyable anymore.

Can someone explain to me why Meta or whoever doesn't just copy TikTok 1to1 with a new name? If TikTok really stops running in the usa, they would have an alternative product instead of Instagram reels and YouTube shorts, both of which obviously can't catch on.

Meta has basically copied TikTok as an 1:1 app at least twice, the most recent being Lasso. The problem most of these many companies trying to emulate TikTok’s success is that the UI/UX and content delivery aren’t the secret sauce. It’s a near bulletproof algorithm that needs comparatively little time to lock in your preferences. Add in the fact that TikTok really doesn’t encourage or reward following creators, it makes for a natural conflict with some of Meta’s base models for operation that they have trouble addressing.

That’s why some suggest that the recent regulatory assaults, cozying up to would be dictators and forced changing of ownership to American corporations is just manufactured corporate raiding by competitors that can’t keep up.

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