If you pay for YouTube Premium every month, there are now five new features rolling out that you can take advantage of, including YouTube Shorts, Smart Downloads, Improved Navigation, and of course, AI.
As explained in a post on YouTube's official blog, the new features aim to give you more control over your YouTube experience. The post also mentions that the number of YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium subscribers now exceeds 100 million.
First up is a new skip feature, available now for US users on Android (and coming soon to iOS). If you double-tap to skip forward, you'll see a button that takes you straight to the most popular part of the video — the straight-forward part. We've heard that such a feature is being tested before, and there's more information on how it works here.
Plus, there's picture-in-picture support for YouTube Shorts, available now on Android devices. This adds to the picture-in-picture experience already offered for standard videos and means you can improve your ability to multitask.
Still experimental
The other three new features are labeled as experimental and can be accessed and enabled on the web. You can choose to enable smart downloads for YouTube Shorts, for example, so you always have short content to watch, even when you're offline.
Then there’s conversational AI, for Android users in the US. This means you can ask an AI bot questions about the video you’re watching, via the Ask a Question button below. This is in addition to the AI summaries that YouTube Premium subscribers can already access.
And the latest experimental feature is a redesigned display page, which changes the way the video and other page elements (including comments) are displayed on the screen. As with all of these experimental features, you have the option to leave feedback, good or bad.
While these new updates aren't particularly significant on their own, when coupled with the other benefits of YouTube Premium, it all adds up. A subscription to the service currently costs $14 / £12 / AU$17 per month and includes YouTube Music Premium.
