Overview
- Users have reported a limited test on YouTube Shorts that swaps the long‑standing thumbs‑up like icon for a heart across Android, iOS and the web for affected accounts.
- For some test accounts the update is a simple icon and animation swap, while other users say the dislike button has disappeared from the Shorts interface entirely.
- The experiment is not listed on YouTube’s public tests page and has not been observed on standard (non‑Shorts) videos or on every device.
- The heart brings Shorts’ feedback visuals closer to TikTok and Instagram and revives concerns tied to YouTube’s earlier removal of public dislike counts.
- Watch for how this could change creator metrics and recommendation signals, and for whether YouTube will expand the test as it simultaneously rolls out contextual like animations.