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 tool. Both are rolling out to a small number of U.S. users on separate platforms. TechCrunch

The Shorts feed appears as a new icon in the app's bottom menu. It shows trailers, clips, and bonus content in a swipeable vertical format, the same style TikTok made popular and that YouTube and Instagram have since copied. What each person sees is personalized based on what they have watched before.

To choose the clips, HBO Max uses a two-step process. First, an AI tool scans thousands of hours of shows and movies to find interesting scenes. It does this using scene-level metadata, which is basically a detailed description of what happens in each scene. Then, human editors pick the final clips from that list.

The conversational search feature lets users describe what they want to watch in plain language. Instead of typing an exact movie or show title, someone could describe the kind of thing they are in the mood for, and the tool would suggest matching content.

Both features are in early testing. The Shorts feed is being tested with select iPhone users in the U.S. The conversational search is available to select Android users in the U.S. Both are expected to expand to more devices and markets. The announcements were made via a Warner Bros. press release on press.wbd.com.

The two features tackle different parts of the same problem. Streaming services have huge libraries, and when people cannot find something to watch quickly, they often leave. The Shorts feed targets the casual browsing behavior that social media apps have trained people to expect. The conversational search targets the situation where someone knows the type of show they want but does not have a specific title in mind.

The broader context here is that streaming platforms have been borrowing ideas from social and short-form video for a while. Netflix tested a similar vertical clips feature. Amazon's Prime Video has experimented with AI-powered recommendations. HBO Max's approach is different because it combines AI scene analysis with human editors making the final choices, rather than relying on fully automated selection or user-created clips.

For a platform whose content is almost entirely professionally produced, the Shorts feed reuses existing shows and movies as a way to help people discover them. It does not ask users to create their own videos. It asks them to sample professional content in a format they are already used to from social apps. The conversational search similarly tries to make finding something to watch easier, without requiring the user to know how the platform categorizes its content.

The human-in-the-loop design on the Shorts feature is worth noting. The AI finds candidate scenes, but editors make the final cut. That matters for a few reasons. HBO Max's library includes prestige dramas and mature programming where an automated system might pick clips that feel tone-deaf or give away spoilers. It also means the system can only move as fast as its editors can review clips, not as fast as the AI can process video.

One thing worth pointing out is the platform split: Shorts on iPhone, conversational search on Android. This is likely just a phased rollout approach rather than a strategic decision, but it does mean early feedback will come from two different groups of users on two different systems, making it harder to compare how well each feature is received.

Both features are experiments with limited availability and no announced timeline for wider expansion. The results will likely determine whether vertical video and conversational search become permanent parts of the HBO Max app or get refined or dropped based on what the tests show.