We’ve come to love and hate YouTube Shorts. The short-form video format is a treat for those looking for quick dopamine hits, but they’re also littered with repetitive content, AI slop, copied content, and low-quality videos.
That’s precisely why the platform lets you hit that Dislike button. Disliking videos improves your algorithm, with YouTube showing less of similar videos in the future. However, with what YouTube seems to be testing right now, it’s going to be slightly more difficult to dislike videos. Oh, and this isn’t the first time YouTube has done this.
The streaming giant experimented with this back in 2024 and even 2025, though each time, the implementation has looked a little different. That’s also the case this time around.
The development was first highlighted by Mrs_Hersheys on the r/YouTube subreddit, with a screenshot showcasing a key change (via Android Authority).
The YouTube Shorts sidebar, from the top to the bottom, normally goes like this: Thumbs up, Thumbs down, Comments, Share, Remix.
With what YouTube is testing, the Thumbs up button has been replaced with a heart icon. It retains its function. More importantly, the Thumbs down/Dislike button is nowhere to be found within the sidebar.
According to some user comments on the Reddit post, the Thumbs down button has been relocated to the three-dot menu. Others suggest that the UI change hasn’t rolled out to them yet.
I’m in the latter group. The change hasn’t appeared for me on Android, iOS, or the web.
Considering the sheer amount of times Google has tried out similar changes to the Shorts UI in the past, it’s unlikely that the change will stick around. I would wish for the heart icon to stay, but then a heart icon with a thumbs-down icon would look completely mismatched from a design standpoint.
Maybe the streaming giant’s next test is a broken heart icon that replaces the Thumbs down icon?
