YouTube Premium adds Jump Ahead and Picture-in-Picture for Shorts

Abner Li | Jun 27 2024 - 8:00 am PT

YouTube is announcing the latest Premium features today for subscribers like Jump Ahead and Shorts Picture-in-Picture.

Related: YouTube details progress on top features requests by Premium subscribers

Jump Ahead shows and takes you to where most people skip to in a video. Double-tap to get a “Jump Ahead” button in the bottom-right corner of the player. After tapping, YouTube explains how you’re “Jumping over commonly skipped section,” with the feature leveraging AI and viewership data.

Jump Ahead is now available for US YouTube Premium subscribers on Android, with iOS support in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, YouTube Shorts now support Picture-in-Picture on Android. This lets you “watch your favorite Shorts while browsing other apps or checking messages.” You can shrink the window to be quite small, while the maximum size is pretty significant. Play/pause and next/last Short controls are available.

YouTube is also detailing three experiments, starting with Smart Downloads for Shorts. This will give you a “fresh batch of entertaining Shorts downloaded to your phone, ready to watch whenever you’re offline.”

YouTube.com/new is bringing back the “Ask” experiment that lets you question a video and get suggestions. There’s also the Redesigned Watch Page experiment that YouTube is officially “building on web to improve your viewing experience and make it easier for you to find related content and engage with comments.”

Your opinions help shape the future of YouTube Premium. Let us know what you think about these experimental features or what you’d like to see in the future via our feedback tool: yt.be/help/feedback.

This joins other YouTube Premium functionality like no ads, offline downloads, background play, 1080p Premium, Google Meet Live Sharing, SharePlay on iOS, Queuing, “Continue watching” prompts, and the occasional perks.