Facebook Video
One fullscreen player for everything you watch, Reels, longer videos and Live, unified into a single, consistent experience with a new set of controls.
Announcement film via Meta Newsroom.
Overview
Watching video on Facebook used to be inconsistent, depending on a video's length or where you found it, you might see a horizontal player, a Feed-like player, or a fullscreen one. This work brought them all together: tap any video, anywhere in the app, and get one consistent, vertically-oriented, fullscreen experience, whether it's a Reel, a longer video, or Live.
I prototyped the unified player and its new controls, the landscape flip, the scrubber, and the tap-to-reveal jump-back/forward and playback-speed options, so the team could feel how one player should handle every kind of video before it rolled out on iOS and Android.
What we prototyped
A single fullscreen, vertical player for Reels, longer videos and Live, consistent no matter where you tap.
A new fullscreen option on horizontal videos lets you flip the phone and watch in true landscape.
A slider along the bottom to jump straight to the part you care about in longer videos.
Tap the video to pause, jump back or forward ten seconds, or change playback speed, perfect for a recipe or tutorial.
The player in motion
Product demos via Meta Newsroom.
Unifying three players into one
The challenge wasn't adding controls, it was making one player feel right for a 15-second Reel, a 20-minute tutorial and a Live broadcast all at once. Prototyping let us feel how the vertical-by-default layout, the landscape flip and the scrubber should behave across those very different formats, so nothing felt bolted on.
Getting that consistency right in a working model is what let the team confidently roll it out across iOS and Android, and opened up new audiences for more kinds of creators.