The two tabs, how Community decides what you see, sound and captions, and how paid videos work.
_The two tabs, how Community decides what you see, sound and captions, and how paid
videos work._
Videos in the navigation opens the feed — in the sidebar on a computer, and in the
bar along the bottom on a phone. (For a while it was in neither, and the only way in
was to type the address; that's fixed.) Videos → Watch feed from the video grid
gets you to the same place.
A full-screen feed: one clip at a time, filling the screen. Swipe up for the next one
and down to go back. Each clip loops until you move on. On a computer there's no
swiping, so the up and down arrow keys move between clips, and the feed sits in a
centred column rather than stretching across the whole screen.
Clips start muted, because a feed that makes noise the moment it opens is a feed
you close. Tap the video — or the 🔇 button in the corner — to bring the sound in.
That choice sticks as you keep scrolling.
If a creator added captions, CC turns them on and off.
Following is what you chose. Videos from people you follow, and from Hubs you've
joined — a Hub counts as something you follow, so joining one is enough. It's in plain
newest-first order. You picked these, so Arc doesn't reorder them on you.
Community is the one Arc does differently, and it tells you why every clip is
there. Tap the ⓘ line above the buttons and it opens up:
the gurdwara, church, club or community centre down the road that you didn't know
was on Arc.
"In your area" means the same town, region or country — not a radius. Arc matches
by place name, because that's what Hubs record. Somewhere on the far side of your city
counts as near; somewhere twenty minutes away over a boundary doesn't. It's a blunt
instrument, and we'd rather say so than imply a precision we haven't got.
If your Hubs are quiet, the tab fills up with public videos from across Arc, and says
so — it won't pretend a stranger's clip came from your Hub.
It counts whether people watched to the end, and whether anyone passed it on.
It ignores the view count. A view is one clip autoplaying as somebody scrolls past
— a bot, a mis-swipe and a genuinely interested person all look identical, and a view
count is the easiest number on a social network to inflate. Staying to the end is a
choice, and sharing something puts your own name behind it. Those are the two we weigh.
A clip needs a handful of viewers before completion counts at all, so one keen watcher
can't make a video look popular. Shares count for a lot, but with a ceiling, so a group
passing the same clip round can't park it at the top of everyone's feed.
What Arc records, and what it doesn't. To count "watched to the end" once per
person, Arc has to recognise you when you come back. It does that with a scrambled,
one-way version of your account id — enough to tell that two views were the same
person, and not enough to build a list of what you've watched. Your account id is never
stored next to your watching. There is no viewing history to hand over, because there
isn't one.
The buttons down the right-hand side work the way they do everywhere else on Arc:
own page, if a creator uploaded it rather than posting it.
copied ready to paste. Sharing is one of the two things Community counts, so it
genuinely helps a clip reach the people near whoever posted it.
Creators can put a video behind a subscription. **Those videos don't appear in the
swipe feed** — the feed carries free clips only.
That's deliberate. The feed is built for browsing, with nowhere in it to subscribe,
so a paid video would either interrupt your scroll with a payment screen or play
without the creator being paid. Paid videos live on their own pages instead, where
subscribing is one tap, reachable from the creator's profile or a shared link.
If you subscribe to a creator, their paid videos play in full on those pages
straight away. Creators always see their own videos.
There's no longer a free preview of a paid video. Previews used to play the first
30 seconds. Delivering that meant sending the whole file to your device and stopping
it partway, which isn't much of a lock — so paid videos now show the subscribe screen
up front. Proper previews need a separate short clip made at upload, and that's a
change still to come.
Two ways in, and they behave differently — worth knowing which you want.
Post it like anything else. Write a post, attach the clip, and choose where it
goes: your followers, or one of your Hubs. It appears in the feed like any other post,
and it's the only route that can reach a Hub — so if you want the people in your
gurdwara, club or community centre to see it, post it there.
Videos → Upload is the creator route. Add a title, a description and captions,
scrub through to choose the cover frame, and if you're a creator with subscriptions
turned on, mark it premium and pick the tier it needs. These clips belong to you rather
than to a Hub, they carry a Creator video label in the feed, and they get their own
page with the comments and the subscribe button on it.
Both appear in the feed. Clips under a minute suit it best; longer videos work better
on their own page.
iPhones record in a format (HEVC, in a QuickTime file) that Safari plays but Chrome and
Firefox usually cannot. If you post a video straight from an iPhone, some people will see
it fine and others will see a message instead of a picture.
When that happens Arc tells the viewer plainly — **"This video may not play in your
browser — try Safari, or open it directly"** — with a link to the file, rather than
showing them an empty grey box. Opening in Safari is the quickest fix; on a Mac or iPhone
that usually just works.
You'll only see that message if the video actually fails. It used to appear on every
iPhone video, including the ones playing perfectly in front of you, which was just noise.
If the clip plays, Arc says nothing.
We're aware this isn't good enough. Converting videos on upload so they play everywhere is
a change still to come; until then, if a video matters and you have the option, posting an
MP4 will reach the widest audience.
A playback link is personal to you and expires after a couple of hours, so a very old
tab may need refreshing. If a video won't start at all, reload the page — that fetches
a fresh link. Copying a video's address out of the page and sending it to someone
else won't work for them, by design.