In the YouTube world, the number of views and likes of a video are two fundamental metrics for measuring its success on the platform.
More views and likes not only cause YouTube’s algorithm to recommend the video to more users, but also help viewers, at least in part, decide whether they should invest time in a video or move on to something else.
And now, YouTube makes it easy to see how many times a video has been viewed and liked. At least if you actively look at it. As Android Police reports, likes and view counts are now updated in real time on both the web version of YouTube and the Android app.
These counters display a small animation every time they refresh, even when the video is paused. They also update in the background, so users see the most current count every time they switch to another browser tab or app and then return to the YouTube tab or app.
Currently, this feature only appears to be generally available for the web version of YouTube and not the Android app. Therefore, it may not appear on your device until YouTube decides to expand the scope of the feature. Unfortunately, if you don’t want the likes and views counts to update in real time, there is currently no way to disable this.