YouTube said Wednesday that it is adding new experimental features for Premium users, including high-quality audio, faster playback speed option on mobile, and the ability to “jump ahead” on the web to skip to the more intriguing part of the video.
The company routinely tests new features that users can activate from youtube.com/new. The company said users can now enable an experimental feature that lets them listen to music videos with a higher audio bitrate — up to 256kbps. As a reminder, YouTube Music already offers this quality for audio listening when you turn up the settings to High in the playback settings.
On mobile, picture-in-picture can be helpful if you quickly want to reply to a text or an email, or check something else while a video is playing. One of the new tests allows users to play YouTube Shorts in the picture-in-picture mode on iOS.
What’s more, YouTube is now adding the option to turn on smart downloads for Shorts on iOS — when you turn on smart downloads, YouTube automatically downloads videos that could interest you when you have a good connection. This way, you can watch them offline without an internet connection. Both of these features were already available to Android users.
If you like watching videos at a higher playback speed, YouTube now allows you to watch them at up to 4x speed on mobile. Until now, the users could set 2x as the highest playback speed.
Last year, YouTube introduced a”Jump Ahead” feature on mobile, which allows users to skip to the best part of the video. YouTube’s algorithm determines those best parts 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 features. For YouTube Music, the company is expanding its “Ask Music” feature to the UK and Ireland. Users can ask for “upbeat workout tracks” or “relaxing jazz,” and the app will create a customized radio station related to the prompt. Other rivals, including Spotify and Amazon Music, have also been trying out such features.
YouTube started dabbling with a conversational AI feature for users to ask questions about a video or get recommendations in 2023. The company said that this feature will soon be available to iOS users as well.
