For vertical live streamers, YouTube is stressing that practice makes perfect

Nearly a year after it was first teased, Practice Mode for Vertical Live is here. That’s the name of a new feature that provides a trial run for streaming greenhorns who are looking to go live more often.

The Vertical Live format, which was first teased in 2023 and rolled out a year later, is the YouTube Shorts version of TikTok LIVE. It brings streaming content to the Shorts feed while also letting creators stream in an environment filled with revenue streams and other monetization features. Some creators who have tried out Vertical Live have described it as an “OP” form of streaming.

The potential of Vertical Live is clear, but some creators might be intimidated by the idea of going live in such an intimate environment. That’s where Practice Mode comes in. As revealed by YouTube Creator Liaison Rene Ritchie on the Creator Insider channel, Practice Mode lets creators get all their ducks in a row before welcoming viewers into their Vertical Live stream. As Ritchie puts it, if you’re “not 100% fully confident about handling everything from chat to polls, stickers to green screens, and just the stream,” then Practice Mode is the place where you can “try things out” in a “zero-pressure environment.”

YouTube announced Practice Mode for Vertical Live at its Made On event last year. That presentation included a host of new features for vertical streamers, so Ritchie isn’t kidding when he suggests that new streamers might need a moment to comprehend the Vertical Live suite before going live.

From a philosophical standpoint, Practice Mode resembles Trial Reels, the Instagram feature that lets creators test their short-form content among a small group of viewers before pushing it out widely. Trial Reels became a (perhaps unintentional) growth hack for many of its users, which led to increased adoption within the Instagram community.

Practice Mode is functionally different from Trial Reels, so it’s unlikely to become the hot new growth hack for YouTubers. At the same time, there’s no denying the immense value generated by vertical live streams on platforms like TikTok. If Practice Mode helps timid creators get comfortable enough to claim a bigger piece of the monetization pie, then maybe it can be classified as a growth hack — even if it is, quite literally, a one-person show.