HBO Max announced two new mobile features on Tuesday, July 28, 2026: a TikTok-style vertical-video "Shorts" feed and an AI-powered conversational search interface, both rolling out to limited U.S. users on separate platforms. TechCrunch

The Shorts feed is accessible via a new icon in the app's bottom navigation menu. It surfaces trailers, clips, and bonus content in a swipeable vertical format. Content is personalized to each user based on watch history.

The clip selection pipeline combines machine intelligence with human editorial judgment. An AI tool uses scene-level metadata to analyze thousands of hours of HBO Max's content library and surface compelling scenes. HBO Max editors then make the final clip selections.

The conversational search feature uses natural language understanding to interpret user queries and recommend relevant movies and TV shows. Rather than requiring users to search by exact titles, the feature is designed to accept descriptive or open-ended requests and return content matches.

Both features are in early testing phases. The Shorts feed is being tested with select iOS users in the U.S. The conversational search feature is available to select Android users in the U.S. Both are slated for expansion to additional devices and markets. The announcements were made via a Warner Bros. press release on press.wbd.com.

The two features address different parts of the streaming discovery problem. Vertical video targets the browse-and-sample behavior popularized by TikTok and since adopted by YouTube, Instagram, and others. The conversational search targets intent-based discovery, where users know the kind of thing they want to watch but not a specific title. Together they reflect the same tension every streaming platform faces: large content libraries generate churn risk when users cannot efficiently find something to watch.

The human-in-the-loop design on the Shorts pipeline is worth noting. The AI surfaces candidate scenes; editors make the final cut. That separation matters in a few ways. It keeps brand and editorial standards under human control at a company whose content library includes prestige dramas and mature programming where automated clip selection could produce tone-deaf or spoiler-laden results. It also means the system's throughput is ultimately bounded by editorial capacity, not by the AI's ability to process video.

Worth flagging is the platform split: Shorts on iOS, conversational search on Android. This is likely a standard phased rollout approach rather than a strategic platform decision, but it does mean early coverage and user feedback will come from two distinct audiences on two different operating systems, complicating any comparison of adoption or reception.

The broader context is that streaming platforms have been steadily absorbing patterns from social and short-form video. Netflix tested a similar vertical clips feature. Amazon's Prime Video has experimented with AI-powered recommendations. HBO Max's implementation differs in combining scene-level AI analysis with editorial curation rather than relying on fully automated selection or user-generated clips.

For a platform whose content is almost entirely professionally produced, the Shorts feed repurposes existing library assets into a discovery surface. It does not ask users to create content; it asks them to sample professionally produced scenes in a format they have grown accustomed to from social platforms. The conversational search, similarly, attempts to lower the friction of finding something to watch without requiring the user to think in the platform's own taxonomy.

Both features are experiments in progress, with limited availability and announced plans for expansion but no timeline attached. The results will likely inform whether vertical video and conversational search become permanent fixtures of the HBO Max app or remain exploratory features refined or retired based on what the limited user tests reveal.