YouTube may be hiding the “skip button” that appears in the ad interface. Some users have reported that the skip button is missing entirely, while others have found that it appears after the countdown time has elapsed. The video streaming giant has reportedly stated that the skip button is not messed with. However, the company is testing reducing elements on the ad interface to improve the viewing experience. Separately, the company also announced the decision to increase the duration of Shorts. Now, instead of one minute, the maximum length of a Short can be three minutes.

YouTube reportedly confirms the reduction of elements on the ad screen

The YouTube ad interface has gone through several transformations over the years, but the current layout is pretty standard. There are skippable ads and non-skippable ads. Non-skippable ads only show a bottom bar that shows how long the ad has been playing and how much time is left. However, skippable ads have a few additional elements.

A timer (between 15 to 30 seconds) appears on skippable ads, indicating the minimum duration the user should watch the ad, but when the timer reaches zero, a skip button appears. Users can tap this button to quickly return to the video. Some skippable ads don’t even have a countdown timer and users can skip them directly.

However, a Reddit user posted a screenshot of the incident where the skip button and timer are hidden by a black square. As a result, the button was not visible even though it was present. Similarly, a report by Android Police revealed that no countdown timer was displayed, but the skip button appeared after a few seconds.

These are not isolated incidents either. A few X users have also reported that they can’t see the skip button. Gadgets 360 staff members haven’t been able to spot this yet, but that could be because the YouTube test is geographically restricted.

YouTube spokesperson Oluwa Falodun told The Verge, “YouTube does not hide the skip button. On skippable ads, the button appears after 5 seconds of playback, as always.” However, the spokesperson noted that the video streaming platform is reducing the elements on the ad player to help viewers better engage with the ad content. One part of the change is that the skip timer will appear as a progress bar at the bottom of the screen.

It’s possible that the missing skip button that users have seen so far was a problem in the implementation of this change. However, there is no clarity on the matter until YouTube provides an official explanation for this change.