YouTube

YouTube, which calls itself a “Google company,” has its own branding and design direction that’s independent from the broader organization. YouTube Studio is now getting a new icon that shares some similarity to YouTube Music.

The YouTube video layout on the web has remained relatively the same in recent years, but Google is now testing a web redesign of the description section that is more compact and puts greater emphasis on comments.

After announcing a handful of new education features just last week, Google is updating the privacy and security defaults for students using Chrome, as well as accounts and other apps, managed by schools. 

YouTube has partnered with Hollywood Park in a multiyear agreement that will see a purpose-built 6,000 seat venue named YouTube Theater.

Breaking the YouTube terms of service or violating any of the site’s policies can be a frustrating experience. However, a new test will provide time stamps in YouTube policy violation emails where any violation is believed to exist.

Similar to a Google Drive change for file-sharing links, YouTube is making it so that Unlisted videos uploaded before 2017 will be made Private next month.

The Google-created International Small Business Week is now in its second year, and various teams from across the company are launching new features to celebrate. This includes a Pixel-specific Google Pay promo when shopping at small businesses, faster YouTube ad campaign creation, and three free months of Pointy from Google.

With iOS 14 last year, Apple introduced Picture-in-Picture to let you watch video in a floating window while using other tasks. The YouTube app is finally adding support for PiP on iPhone and iPad. 

Google’s efforts with Android TV OS seem to finally be in gear with new hardware, Google TV, and more. As the platform expands, the YouTube app for Android TV has just passed 100 million installs.

Last month, YouTube TV became available in the main YouTube app as a workaround for the Roku dispute. That integrated YouTube TV experience is now coming to newer Vizio SmartCast televisions.

In an update today, YouTube revealed that it paid $4 billion to the music industry over the last 12 months, while Premium and Music Premium subscriptions saw notable growth at the start of this year. 

YouTube on Android and iOS is now more widely rolling out the expanded video description UI that includes more prominent Likes and View counters alongside accurate upload date information within video overflow menus.

The experience of Casting YouTube to a Chromecast-connected TV has remained mostly unchanged for the past several years. Google now looks to be making a pseudo-YouTube app for Chromecast that takes after the Android TV version.

Google appears to be rolling out an A/B test to some Android TV users that updates the YouTube app with a new video player that can access the video description, adds new channel shortcuts, and more.

On the night of Google I/O 2021, a playback error is affecting many on YouTube with videos ceasing to play at random.

YouTube Shorts are aggressively being pushed to compete with TikTok. To drive content creation, Google is setting up a YouTube Shorts Fund to pay those that create the best short-form videos every month.