If you use your phone in portrait lock all the time, it can be frustrating trying to bring YouTube videos to full screen with the little button on the UI. Fortunately, there’s a better way to use the app’s built-in gestures: You can swipe up on a video to fill the screen and swipe down to revert to portrait orientation.
We’ve actually written about this feature before, but it seems easy to overlook; Most of the people I showed it to didn’t even know it existed.
Of course, this feature also works on Android phones, and I personally like it more than pressing the auto-rotate button built into the OS.
There is one obvious limitation: it only rotates in one direction. If you want to keep your phone left side up, you’re out of luck unless you turn off portrait lock. Still, it’s much better than having to tap the video once to make the UI controls appear and then trying to hit the little full-screen button.
Now all we need is for this feature to be added to all other apps (or for our phones to be smart enough to realize that when I watch a video and turn my phone over, I probably want to see the video full screen despite portrait lock).
