Video hosting site YouTube has announced a number improvements it is adding to almost all platforms. This even includes a feature that was previously exclusive to Premium subscribers, though the company now says that it was part of the feature’s testing phase.
The feature in question is Sleep Timer, which makes videos pause after a certain amount of time. This one is naturally more useful on mobile than it is on PC or TVs, unless you leave YouTube running on a laptop at bedtime or something. With that, this feature is only making its way to mobile devices. You’ll have to pick among the predetermined amount of time a video plays before getting paused though, so not much granularity here.
For that, we get to fine-tunable playback speeds. As it is right now, YouTube only allows for 0.25 speed increments and decrements. The company says it is now rolling out the ability to make adjustments down to 0.05 chunks at a time. There are also other nondescript changes to browsing in landscape mode, though iOS users will only be getting this one later in the year.
YouTube also says that it will be letting users resize and move the miniplayer around. Some of you may have been lucky enough to have experienced this before, at least for awhile before the change was rolled back.
The list of changes to YouTube playlists is a pretty long one, for whatever reason. Among them is the ability to invite others to collaborate on creating one, via either a link or QR code. You can also give playlists custom thumbnails that you can either generate with AI, or upload from your camera roll and then customise with text, filters or stickers.
Content creators on the platform are also getting new badges to celebrate milestones with their viewers. And finally, the app for TVs is getting an new UI for YouTube Shorts, as well as smaller changes elsewhere.
All of these features are being rolled out now, so it may take awhile for them to be reflected on your mobile app, for instance. Some features are also coming later within the year, so there’s a longer wait time for them.
(Source: YouTube)
