Most of us subscribe to YouTube Premium because we can’t stand seeing ads. Of course, some also enjoy YouTube Music as part of the fee, but we actually pay YouTube every month because seeing ads before or during a YouTube video is a terrible experience. So while it wouldn’t be hard for Google to convince us to keep paying our monthly premium fees, they’re at least trying by adding new features.
This month, YouTube Premium is offering 5 new features to try out for subscribers, 3 of which fall into the Experimental category. In other words, you get two features to try out and 3 more that you’ll probably have to sign up for.
Let’s go through the new YouTube Premium extras one by one:
- Skip forward button: Thanks to “a combination of AI and viewer data,” YouTube videos can now offer a Fast Forward button that appears when you double-tap to skip forward in a video. Once you double-tap, this new button will appear and allow you to skip to parts of the video that AI and other people think you’ll want to see. You can see what this button will look like below, and it should be available for Android users today. iOS users will have to wait “a few weeks.”
- Shorts gets picture-in-picture: YouTube Shorts viewers can now keep watching Shorts while multitasking thanks to a picture-in-picture introduction. If you want to check the news, scroll in Chrome, or argue with some jerk on a social network, you can do so while a YouTube Shorts clip plays in the corner.
The experimental functions are as follows:
- Smart Downloads for YouTube Shorts: Like other YouTube smart downloads that automatically download new content to your device in the background, YouTube Shorts can now do the same. This means that many Shorts clips will be downloaded to your phone for offline viewing when you’re ever without an internet connection.
- Conversational AI: This feature appears to have disappeared, but is now available again on Android in the US – you can ask the AI questions about videos, get suggestions, etc. without interrupting playback.
- Newly designed observation page: Finally, there’s a redesigned watch page for YouTube that you can try out. A few people have had this experience and they were apparently very upset about it, so it looks like Google is making it an opt-in idea instead. I’ve had it enabled for a while now and it’s been fine. It did take a bit of time to get used to, but it hasn’t changed my life. Try it out!
To enable YouTube’s experimental features, go to youtube.com/new and enable them.
// Youtube
This post was last edited on June 27, 2024 at 11:29 am
