YouTube Premium is adding more features and benefits for its paid subscribers. One big one is finally being able to watch YouTube Shorts in picture-in-picture mode.
The picture-in-picture mode for YouTube Shorts is currently just on iOS. This feature will let you watch Shorts while using other apps. There’s also a Smart Downloads feature for iOS that automatically saves recommended Shorts for offline viewing. Soon, mobile devices will also support faster playback speeds up to 4 times faster.
A new deal with Google One is also available in the US, where you can save money through bundling services. You’ll get a discount if you buy YouTube Premium along with a Google One Premium plan or higher. This means you’ll get ad-free YouTube, 2 TB of cloud storage, and other perks. However, those who already have YouTube Premium have to cancel their plans to get this bundle. I have both Premium and Google One separately, and when I tried to go to the offer page, I got the message, “Offer not available.” This is a good way to get people off Legacy plans that continue to rise in price.
Some features are being rolled out to more platforms and locations. The “Ask Music” feature, which lets users make custom radio stations based on music descriptions, will soon be available for Android devices in the UK and Ireland. This includes a conversational AI tool for iOS devices that answers questions and recommends related content without stopping the music.
Additionally, a useful feature on YouTube Mobile is moving to the web, and users can try it now. The “jump ahead” feature, which used to be available only on mobile, is now available on web browsers, too, so you can skip to the most popular parts of videos. This usually is how you skip past the sponsored parts. YouTube likely is fine with this because only the creator makes money from sponsors, so giving users this ability doesn’t hurt the platform.
The jump ahead feature is the feature that I got when I went to the page that shows what’s available to try now. This was the same when I tried the mobile browser and the app. However, you may get a different one since the company stated multiple were available to try. Besides the YouTube Shorts and Jump Ahead, another new feature is higher quality audio at 256kbps for music videos, which makes the sound clearer and richer.
Source: YouTube
