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YouTube will remove all pop-up annotations on January 15th
Back in March 2017, YouTube announced that it would be retiring annotations, those boxes that pop up during a video with links and additional information. It discontinued the annotations editor in May of last year and soon all existing annotations will be going away as well. The company added an update to the help page announcing the end of its annotations editor, saying, "We will stop showing existing annotations to viewers starting January 15, 2019. All existing annotations will be removed."
YouTube kills annotations to make way for mobile-friendly features
If you've ever had a grey box pop-up in the middle of a YouTube video to correct spelling, add in some extra information or link you out to another video, you've encountered a YouTube annotation. The feature let creators add content to their video after it had already gone live, but it had its drawbacks -- annotation boxes weren't dynamic, and the only worked on the desktop version of the site. Soon, they won't work at all. Today, YouTube announce that the feature is being retired. Instead, it encourages creators to use its Cards and End Screens features, which work equally well on desktop and mobile devices.
YouTube cards might finally get you to click video links
Lots of YouTube videos carry annotations with links to related clips or other websites, but how many of them do you actually visit? Probably few of them, if any. However, YouTube may have a way to pique your interest. It's rolling out cards that both look much nicer -- compared to text boxes, anyway -- and are available at any time, not just at specific moments. They'll work on mobile, too, so you won't miss important contextual info just because you're on your phone. YouTube isn't ditching old-school annotations yet (it wants to fill out the cards' feature set first), but it's clear that their days are numbered.
