YouTube on Wednesday added new experimental features for premium users, including higher quality audio, faster playback speed options on mobile, and a “jump to” feature on the web that lets you skip to more interesting parts of a video. Then he announced.
The company regularly tests new features that users can enable from youtube.com/new. The company says users can now enable an experimental feature that allows them to listen to music videos at higher audio bitrates (up to 256kbps). YouTube Music already allows you to listen to audio at this quality by setting the setting to High in the playback settings.
On mobile, picture-in-picture is useful if you want to quickly reply to a text or email, or want to check something else while a video is playing. One of the new tests will allow users to play YouTube Shorts in picture-in-picture mode on iOS.
Additionally, YouTube has added an option to turn on smart downloads for Shorts on iOS. When you turn on Smart Downloads, YouTube automatically downloads videos that might be of interest to you if you have a good connection. This way you can watch offline without an internet connection. Both of these features were already available to Android users.
If you want to watch videos at faster playback speeds, YouTube now lets you watch videos up to 4x faster on mobile. Previously, users could set 2x as the maximum playback speed.
Last year, YouTube introduced the “Jump Ahead” feature on mobile, allowing users to skip to the best part of a video. YouTube's algorithms determine the best of these through machine learning and user feedback. The company is now bringing this feature to the web for premium users.
Google is also expanding two YouTube-related AI capabilities. As for YouTube Music, the company is expanding its “Ask Music” feature to the UK and Ireland. When users request “upbeat workout tracks” or “relaxing jazz,” the app creates customized radio stations related to that prompt. Other rivals such as Spotify and Amazon Music are experimenting with similar features.
YouTube began rolling out conversational AI features in 2023 that let users ask questions about videos and get recommendations. The company said this feature will soon be available to iOS users as well.