YouTube

This week, Google announced another step towards the end of Play Movies & TV as it continues to push towards Google TV instead. It’s the right call, but with a headache attached for many customers.

Since 2018, YouTube has offered a collection of free-to-watch movies that are supported by advertising. That YouTube library in the US is now expanding to TV shows with almost 4,000 free episodes.

The latest UI test for YouTube on mobile makes yet more adjustments to the autoplay “Playback in feed” feature to make this more immersive.

YouTube Premium is how you’re officially supposed to watch videos without ads so that Creators continue to earn revenue from their work. An effort has long existed to get around paying for the ad-free subscription, but “YouTube Vanced” is now shutting down.

The latest project from Area 120, Google’s house incubator, is called “Aloud,” and it lets YouTube creators “quickly and easily dub their videos into multiple languages.”

YouTube’s interest in the podcasting space is quite explicit at this point, and the latest effort is offering grants to make video podcasts that are more native to the network.

In an effort to shine more of a spotlight on its active creators, YouTube is adding a new feature that highlights when a creator goes live by adding a ring around their profile picture.

Back in June, YouTube announced that it was beginning to roll out Picture-in-Picture (PiP) to the iOS app for Premium subscribers. That said, the Google video site has yet to make it widely available, though it just extended the opt-in testing period again.

YouTube tends to overhaul its website and mobile apps component-by-component. The latest example of this is a big redesign, especially in fullscreen mode, of the video player in YouTube for Android.

In YouTube’s 2022 Priorities letter, CEO Susan Wojcicki cited podcasting (just before NFTs) as an additional source of revenue for Creators. Podcasts already exist on the site as videos, but this is the latest mention that strongly implies that YouTube is going to provide a more dedicated experience. What form could YouTube Podcasts take and does that sound like something you’d use?

Short-form videos have taken the internet by storm over the past few years thanks to the rise of platforms such as TikTok. YouTube Shorts first made its debut in 2020, and in the time since, creators have collectively generated over 5 trillion views.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has outlined the video streaming platforms “2022 Priorities” which, annoyingly, could include NFTs.

In recent weeks, YouTube very quietly introduced an annual plan for YouTube Premium and Music Premium. It currently features a rather notable discount compared to paying every month, but that ends very soon.

The latest YouTube “new” feature that users can test, though it’s not widely available, is “Smart downloads” for the Android app. 

YouTube on smart TVs is gaining a simple mobile sign-in feature to help improve the account linking process and, in turn, reduce the stress of adding your details to selected devices. The video streaming service also appears to be adding a “Repeat” video toggle for Android TV, games consoles, and other platforms.