Facebook has announced major updates for video which brings new features. The social network has also launched a new app for TVs.
First up, videos on Facebook’s mobile app will now autoplay with audio turned on by default. Prior to this, videos played silently and you had to tap on a video to hear sound. Facebook says people watch more video on phones, they expect sound when the volume on their device is turned on. The audio will fade as you scroll through videos in News Feed. I believe may users will not welcome this feature as it will be quite annoying if unwanted videos start playing. However, you can disable this feature by switching off “Videos in News Feed Start With Sound” in Settings. If your phone is set to silent, videos will not play with sound.
Vertical videos will now look better on iOS and Android mobile devices. The social network said it tested a larger preview of vertical videos in News Feed on mobile last year and users have responded positively. Now, this larger format is available to everyone. Next up, users can now minimize the video they are watching to a picture-in-picture view that keeps playing in the corner of your screen while you browse other stories in News Feed. This feature is already available on YouTube. You can drag the video to any corner of the screen, and if you are using an Android device, you can keep the video playing even when you exit the Facebook app to do something else on your phone.
Finally Facebook has announced a new video app for TV, which will roll out soon to app stores for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Samsung Smart TV, with more platforms to come. The app will let you watch videos that are present on Facebook, but on a larger screen. Facebook users were watching more than 100 million hours of video every day in early 2016. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has already mentioned how important videos are for its platform.
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