YouTube Premium gets five new features

YouTube’s paid subscription tier is adding five additional features today that it hopes will differentiate it enough from the free tier that you’ll pay for it monthly.

YouTube Premium subscribers can now use a queue system on phones and tablets, which was previously in testing until the end of January. This is available to everyone on computers when using the YouTube website, but mobile app functionality is limited to subscribers. As the name suggests, this lets you create a queue of videos to play, add new ones, and change the positions of those that are already there.

Then, Premium members can host Google Meet sessions where all participants, whether Premium or Free users, can watch YouTube videos together. This is currently live via Meet Live Sharing on Android devices and will be enabled “in the coming weeks” for FaceTime users on iOS via SharePlay.

The third new feature is the ability to continue watching YouTube videos where you left off, even if you’ve switched devices. This is live now on Android, iOS and Web.

The fourth new feature, Smart Downloads, now adds recommended videos directly to your library, ready to watch offline. This should help if you forgot to download stuff for your next flight, for example, although it’s unclear exactly what’s new here, as this has been available to Premium members for some time. time now.

Finally, “in the coming weeks”, for Premium members, YouTube on iOS will offer an improved bitrate version for videos in 1080p HD resolution (this was detected during tests in February). The company promises that this bitrate-enhanced version “will be crisper and clearer, especially for videos with lots of detail and movement,” although 1080p HD resolution will still be available to everyone, just not at this bitrate. higher.

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