The new Android application home screen has several issues which I group into two categories: ignoring previously-set application settings, and counterintuitive behavior.

When a stream comes up on the new home screen it unconditionally begins automatically playing immediately. This occurs regardless of how one arrived at this screen, and it occurs regardless of how the "Video autoplaying" account setting is set. Moreover, it attempts to load with automatic resolution setting irrespective of what one's stream resolution is set to. My mobile data connection typically causes stuttering video when resolution is set to automatic, so I set it to one specific fixed resolution that I know it will support. The effect of this new page's behavior is a stream which loads slowly, does not play consistently, and typically is not the stream I opened the application to watch anyway. Respecting these application settings would largely resolve this issue. There is no circumstance in which it is acceptable to unconditionally play audio or video on a mobile device.

The second major category of issues is the counterintuitive behavior that this update introduced. Here are some specific examples:

• Tapping the downward-pointing chevron on the upper left of a stream closes the stream and begins playing an unrelated stream. A downward-pointing chevron is an icon which indicates it will shrink or minimize something, not close it entirely and certainly not begin playing something entirely new, making the new behavior counterintuitive.

• Pulling down on a stream closes the stream and begins playing an unrelated stream. Intuitive responses to this gesture include shrinking the stream to a picture-in-picture view, shrinking the stream and moving it to the bottom of the screen, or closing the stream and playing nothing. A vertical pull, being a dismissive gesture in the context of this application's layout, intuitively should not begin playing something new because it is not an expected result of such a gesture.

• There is no way to peruse the list of followed streams, the "Browse" view. or twitch notifications without closing the active stream and playing an unrelated stream instead. Swiping from the left side after loading a stream from the list of followed stream does nothing.

• The followed stream list is now accessed in a very different way from the "Browse" view.

Personally, my preferred behavior for the mobile apps and even the main web site would be to show me my list of followed streams and nothing else. This list is now more difficult for me to use because it loads more slowly as the unconditionally-loading video I didn't ask for in the home view bogs down my mobile internet connection down, and I now can't make that stop because that list now appears in a popover instead of its own view.