Since YouTube stopped showing users how many dislikes a video has, users have had to resort to seeking out opinions about a video in the comment section.

This creates something of a problem because if you’re watching a video on desktop, one has to scroll past the video to read the comments. Our solution to this has always been to open up a second window with the same video so that we can read comments. It’s not elegant, but it works.

Thankfully, those days might be behind us.

YouTube is currently testing a feature whereby users can submit and interact with comments without having to scroll away from the video.

As you can see in the image above, the comments now appear on the right-hand side of a video much like the chat does during livestreams. This comment box isn’t always visible though. By clicking on the “Comments” box you can see at the bottom of the image, users can bring up the larger Comments box on the side. Getting rid of this box is as simple as clicking the X.

We should point out that when the comments are located alongside the video, comments aren’t visible below the video.

Keen-eyed readers will also likely spot the font difference in the video title. We have seen this font on the YouTube smartphone app, YouTube’s official blog, as well as in other Google products. Whether it’s set to become a permanent fixture on YouTube is unclea,r but brand homogeneity is always a good idea.

As mentioned, this is a test which means that in order to participate you will need to be a YouTube Premium subscriber. Premium subscribers can head here to participate in available tests and we highly recommend submitting feedback once you’ve played around for a bit.

You can activate, deactivate and provide feedback on test features here.