YouTube

YouTube on mobile is removing the ability to skip forward or backward when viewing a video by tapping the seek bar in the video viewer.

Thanks to a brand new toggle, YouTube for web is now able to respect your browser theme automatically rather than relying on you to flick between dark and light mode.

Today, many reviewers use YouTube as a platform to share their thoughts about new products in video form. To better accommodate both reviewers and potential buyers, Google is reportedly planning to integrate a full shopping experience into YouTube.

As the world’s biggest video-sharing platform, YouTube goes through almost constant transformation with tweaks, adjustments, and overhauls on an almost yearly basis. The latest looks to be iOS-style line icons within all YouTube menus, sub-menus, sections, and even in the player window.

YouTube has essentially the same app across TV platforms, and over the past week it’s been rolling out a revamped video interface to some platforms. Here’s a quick look at the new YouTube UI rolling out on Android TV, Fire TV, and probably other platforms.

YouTube today announced a series of changes to how age-restricted videos work on its platform. The Google company will be leveraging machine learning in this review process, while YouTube videos meant for those over 18 will not play on third-party sites.

YouTube loves to experiment and test new features with subsections of users, and the latest will be a brand-new section for upcoming content such as live streams and premieres within the dedicated “Subscription” section.

As rumored — and following other social networks, YouTube today announced “Shorts” as a “new short-form video experience for creators and artists who want to shoot short, catchy videos using nothing but their mobile phones.”

Over the past several months, the Australian government has been preparing legislation to force Google (and Facebook) to pay local publishers for content that appears in Search and News. The tech companies have come out against this proposal, and Google today is directly appealing to its Australian users in an open letter.

Even though YouTube is still the largest online video-sharing site by a massive margin, a new report has uncovered that almost 90% of video uploaded to the service generates fewer than 1,000 views.

A lot happens on YouTube, and the Google video site has for ages emailed subscribers that opted into alerts about new uploads and livestreams. YouTube is getting rid of these emails next week as very few people opened alerts about new videos from their inbox.

In a support post this week, YouTube has confirmed some unfortunate news. In September, YouTube’s community caption/translation features are being removed from the platform.

YouTube is testing a new upload icon and icon positioning on the mobile app to help improve and streamline uploads from your smartphone.

One of the coolest promises of Google Stadia back at GDC 2019 was the ability to easily livestream your gameplay to YouTube Gaming and bring lucky watchers directly into your game. Now eight months after launch, Google is finally testing YouTube live streaming for Stadia alongside exclusive “Crowd Play” features.

Android TV’s YouTube app is getting a couple of welcome updates. Thanks to a server-side change, YouTube Music has arrived on Android TV through the bigger YouTube app — Yep, it’s super weird.

YouTube for Android has now lowered the maximum streaming quality for content in India to just 480p as the country has now gone into full lockdown.

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Ads on YouTube pay the creators of videos, and for the most part, they’re found only at the beginning of a video. In longer videos, though, ads can be placed in the middle of the video too, and now, YouTube is lowering the time requirement on these mid-roll ads.

For many, exercise has been one area particularly affected by COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing requirements. Google Fit wants to help ease that by integrating YouTube playlists on staying healthy indoors.

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