Beginning October 15, YouTube Shorts will extend its maximum length to 3 minutes. The move competitively positions the Google unit against TikTok, which allows for videos of up to 10 minutes when recording, or an hour when uploading. Regular YouTube accommodates videos of up to 12 hours for verified accounts and 15 minutes for unverified accounts, whether live or uploaded. But in terms of marketing focus, the current attention is on short-form video. YouTube is also updating the Shorts player, adding templates, and introducing a Shorts trends page for mobile.

YouTube explains in a blog post that the move to 3-minute Shorts “was a top requested feature by creators,” applies to videos that are “square or taller in aspect ratio” and is expected to make “Shorts more immersive.”

“YouTube says the new Shorts player is designed to streamline the look of these short videos, making the creator’s content stand out by placing it front and center in the user interface,” writes TechCrunch, noting “it does this by turning the interaction buttons (e.g., comment, share, etc.) on the right side of the screen into outlined icons instead of those filled with white, allowing viewers to see more of the video that would have otherwise been hidden.”

Adding templates allows YouTube creators to quickly leverage trends, an area in which TikTok has made hay with parent company ByteDance’s CapCut app.

“From any TikTok video created with a CapCut template, users can hop directly into CapCut’s app to participate in the trend by modifying the template with their own content,” TechCrunch reports. With Templates, YouTube Shorts is “doing something similar, but without a separate app.”

The pre-made templates allow users to add panache to Shorts audio and visuals. ZDNet details how “templates can be accessed by tapping ‘Remix’ within a Short and selecting ‘Use this template.’”

In the coming months, YouTube will expand template remixing, inviting creators to pull from multiple sources, by tapping into “the vast universe of YouTube content” directly from the Shorts camera, “making it easier to remix clips from your favorite videos, music videos and more.”

Comment previews are also coming to the Shorts feed, and YouTube is adding a trends page to Shorts on mobile. The latter will allow users “to discover the popular trends in their own country for inspiration,” notes TechCrunch. “This differentiates YouTube from TikTok, which focuses more on having users discover trends simply by browsing their For You feed or by tapping on search.”

Last month, YouTube announced that Google DeepMind’s Veo AI video generator is coming to YouTube Shorts. “Creators will be able to bring their ideas to life with even more extraordinary video backgrounds and standalone video clips, making your Shorts even dreamier later this year,” the company emphasized.