YouTube is reintroducing private messaging after testing new ways for users to share videos and "have conversations about them" last year. In an announcement on its official blog, YouTube says it's now starting to expand the in-app video sharing and messaging feature to users in the US and "other global regions" who are 18 or older.
The video sharing platform had previously introduced private messaging in 2017, before discontinuing it just two years later to focus on public conversations like the Instagram-like Stories feature - which it also killed in 2023. When it started testing its latest in-app messaging capabilities in November 2025, …
