YouTube adds TikTok like live rings to show channel streaming

YouTube to soon add a new indicator to show when a channel is streaming live on the platform, its chief product officer, Neal Mohan, announced on Twitter. It consists of showing a ring with the word "Live" around the profile image of a channel when they are broadcasting live, which you can touch to jump directly to the live broadcast. The feature should make it easier to find currently live content while browsing YouTube.

If the feature sounds familiar to you, it might be because it's already used in a couple of other services. TikTok uses a similar pulsing ring effect on a channel's profile picture if they're live-streaming when you play their video in your feed. Instagram also displays a colourful ring around live streaming accounts' profile pictures when they're displayed at the top of your feed.

Like Stories, which originally started out as a Snapchat feature before quickly being cloned by virtually every other platform, it seems the live ring UI was too seamless not to be integrated into YouTube. But the biggest example of the inspiration YouTube is taking from TikTok is undoubtedly "Shorts," a feature that lets you browse short-form video content using a vertical scrolling feed.