YouTube recently rolled out a new experience that locks the screen to prevent accidental button taps while watching a video that would otherwise pause it. The company made the announcement in its YouTube Experiments page.

The "Lock Screen" disables touch input, which means that users won't have to worry about accidentally pausing or skipping a video, or clicking on one of the suggested videos when they want to continue watching a full-screen video. Users with access to the test can tap on the gear icon at the top left of the screen to enable the feature.

First spotted by Cord Cutters News, YouTube's new lock feature will only be available for select premium subscribers on Android and iOS devices. YouTube is giving users until July 30 to try out the feature. Users can visit the YouTube home page to see if they received an invitation.

YouTube's new test, in fact, is like the feature Netflix rolled out in 2020, where the mobile app of Netflix introduced a screen lock feature, letting subscribers tap on a lock icon at the bottom of the screen to make buttons like play and pause from showing up, thus avoiding accidental stop-on-play or accidental enabling of subtitles.

YouTube is also conducting a few other experiments presently, such as a mechanism to constrain usage on ad blockers by informing users that the video player will be blocked after three videos unless they disable the ad blocker. The company is also said to be mulling over an online game offering that would enable users to play games from the YouTube website or app.