X Tests Dedicated Video Tab in Lower Function Bar

X appears to be close to launching a new button along the app’s bottom toolbar, with its own dedicated, immersive video feed directly accessible with one touch.

As you can see in this exampleshared by the app researcher @p4muithe bottom function bar on Xu is set for a makeover, with a new icon for Grok, its AI chatbot, and a quick link to its full-screen video feed.

Which, given that X is still advertised as “video first platform”, makes sense. Although it’s still not “video first”, because it won’t open to that feed.

Regardless, the update would put more emphasis on video content as X continues to build its roster original video programmingwhich is slowly becoming a more critical focus for his business planning, in terms of audience retention and ad placement.

Although, again, X has actually been experimenting with this for a while now, with an initial prototype of the updated lower function bar spotted during testing in January last year.

As you can see, there was no Grok button at that stage, so the lower function options were kept to just five icons. Now X has expanded that to six, with this new iteration set to replace the “Groups” tab with a video button.

Which is also interesting from a user interface perspective.

Previous Twitter leadership was very hesitant to add too many function buttons to this bottom panel, for fear of cluttering the user experience. In fact, back in 2015, when Twitter launched “Moments”there was a lot of internal debate about whether they should include a Moments tab within this panel.

They eventually added a lightning bolt icon to Moments, but removed it a year later, replacing it with an “Explore” button. Since then, it’s been down to just five cards, but X has already added another, which may or may not affect user engagement.

But as noted, if X really wants to make the video the focus, it needs to find ways to achieve just that.

You can already touch X’s full-screen video feed by expanding any embedded video, then swiping up to move to the next video clip, but it’s not very intuitive. And with video consumption on the rise (X says in-app video views increased by 40% compared to the previous year), it makes sense for X to provide a more direct video viewing option.

If indeed it is published.

Maybe this time X will actually launch this new card, although it could also be an X Premium exclusive, meaning hardly anyone will be able to use it.

Either way, it’s another indication of X’s focus on video, which should be taken into account when planning your X content.