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Twitter is testing multiple video playback speeds

It's coming to select users on the web and Android.

Steve Dent

Most Twitter users can only create videos up to 140 seconds in length, but some viewers apparently still don't have time for that. Luckily, Twitter has announced that it's testing playback speeds varying from .25x to 2x on Android or the web, similar to what you can do on YouTube, Netflix and other platforms.

Folks like myself (in France, on Android) with access to the feature will see a gear at the top of a video, next to the closed caption option. Selecting that allowed me to choose from a fairly granular range of speeds with sound pitch adjusted so you don't get the "Chipmunks" effect. It could be useful to folks with short attention spans or if you need to slow down a video to hear a word, to name a couple of potential use cases.

Variable playback speeds will work for "tweet videos, amplify videos, voice tweets, videos in DMs and video live replays, depending on their platform," Twitter spokesperson Joseph Nunez told The Verge. Twitter plans to expand the feature to iOS down the road. It's now in testing for select users, but there's no word on when Twitter might roll it out more widely.