YouTube’s new feature is conquering Europe. Poles showed that it makes sense

YouTube is bringing back the private messaging (DM) feature that debuted in 2017 but was discontinued two years later. From November 2025, this function is being tested again, initially in Poland and Ireland. Now the experiment has covered a total of 31 European countries.

Google decided to add 29 countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Users can now send private messages, share videos, Shorts and live broadcasts, and invite friends to chat. Notifications inform about acceptance of the invitation, and everything is available using the mobile application.

This is a step towards competing with Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms. YouTube collects feedback to gauge popularity before global rollout. At the moment, North America, the region where YouTube comes from, is excluded for now.

The chat function is only available to users over the age of 18, we do not know whether this limit will be maintained after testing.