YouTube has released a full version of its profile cards feature to the public. 

Profile cards display a user's details, including their name and when they subscribed to a channel. It also displays a series of their recent comments on various videos.

The feature was initially introduced to allow creators to identify frequent visitors, top commenters and problematic users. 

The profile card doesn't display every single comment posted by a user, just the ones pertaining to the channel you're looking at. At a glance, users can hover over a name and check out exactly where they've been leaving comments. If they have a history of leaving negative comments or trolling, everything they've posted will be easily accessible.

Of course, all of this information is already public on YouTube, but it saves creators time and energy when encountering the same users repeatedly. With this information close to hand, creators can quickly make the decision of whether someone is in the comments just to cause trouble.

Behave yourself

YouTube began testing this feature back in September last year. While the feedback was positive, some users asked for an option to opt-out of the card. It's currently only available on Android, but YouTube plans to roll profile cards out on other platforms soon.

“It will help you get a sense of what this person is writing,” YouTube director of product management Tom Leung said in the initial announcement video.

“We hope that it will strengthen connections with others in the YouTube community and will help creators recognise some of their best commenters."