YouTube adds TikTok-style live rings to show when a channel is streaming

Screenshot: YouTube

Neal Mohan, the chief product officer of YouTube, has announced on the social networking site that it is adding a new indicator to show when a channel is live streaming. You can jump into the live broadcast with a tap on the ring around the profile picture of the channel. The feature will make it easier to find live content.

The feature is already used on a couple of other services. If you scroll past their video in your feed, you will see a similar ring effect on their profile picture. When live streaming accounts are shown at the top of your feed, there is a colorful ring around the profile pictures.

Really focused making it easier for users to find livestreams on @YouTube so we're rolling out the Live rings feature on mobile! @YouTubeCreators streaming live will now have a ring around the channel avatar & clicking on the avatar will take you directly to the livestream. pic.twitter.com/QylUbpktum

— Neal Mohan (@nealmohan) February 18, 2022

It seems that the live ringUI was too perfect to not integrate into YouTube, like Stories, which originally started out as a Snapchat feature before being cloned by basically every other platform out there. The biggest example of the inspiration YouTube is taking from TikTok is the feature that lets you browse short-form video content using a vertically scrolling feed.