YouTube suggested videos are blocking playback controls

YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is one of its biggest strengths. Regardless of the topic you’re exploring, the platform does a good job of surfacing more relevant content to watch next. Lately, though, those recommendations appear to be getting a little too aggressive for a large subset of users.

An increasing number of YouTube users on Android are seeing suggested videos appearing over the bottom portion of the player in full screen, essentially obscuring a part of the video and the progress bar, all while making it impossible to scrub through a video.

I’ve seen a similar UI issue with YouTube on my Pixel 8 as well, and the same goes for my colleague Ryan McNeal. For both of us, the UI inconsistency went away soon after it first appeared. But that temporary nature doesn’t seem to be the case for many others.

Additionally, YouTube representatives are normally quick when it comes to addressing bugs affecting so many users. Even if the company doesn’t get to the fix immediately, it often replies to users on posts gaining traction (one of the Reddit posts has over 300 upvotes) to acknowledge the problem and confirm that it is being investigated. Surprisingly, so far, we haven’t come across any Google/YouTube comments acknowledging the bug.

We’ve reached out to Google, and we’ll update this article if we learn anything new. In the meantime, if you’re one of the affected users, you might want to try out a temporary but straightforward fix suggested by user GameGoalstryhard. The trick is to tap one of the recommended videos covering playback, then hit the previous video (left arrow) button. This should take you back to the video you were originally on, with recommended videos not bleeding into the bottom of the player.