Christian Zibreg
Google has announced a slew of updates rolling out to YouTube on desktop, mobile, and TVs, including a redesigned mini-player. There are also some changes coming to YouTube Music.
Previously, the mini-player was a horizontal bar at the bottom containing a tiny cropped video along with the Play/Pause button and the X button to close the player. The newly revamped mini-player resembles a picture-in-picture window, with an X icon in the video’s top-left corner and the Play/Pause, Rewind, and Forward relocated to the black bar below the video. The new arrangement removes obstructions to make the video more prominent, but that’s not all—you can resize the redesigned mini-player to be larger and move it around.
YouTube’s video player brings tweaked playback speed options. Previously, you could set the playback speed by hitting the settings gear icon and choosing from the 0.25x, 05x, 0.75x, 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x, and 2x increments in the Playback Speed menu. The increments are still present, but now you also get a slider for precise playback speed control in 0.05x increments. The new mini-player is detailed in Google’s support document.
YouTube is also gaining a sleep timer function in the mobile app. You can set a timer to automatically pause playback after a certain amount of time, with the 10, 15, 20, 30, 45 minutes, 1 hour, and end of video options available. To use this feature, click the settings gear icon in the video’s top-right corner and choose the Sleep Timer option under “Additional settings” or peruse YouTube’s help page for more information.
YouTube is also adding collaborative playlists. People you invite via a custom link can add videos to the collaborative playlist, and you can remove contributors at will (QR code invites on TVs coming later). This will be awesome for house parties and family playlists! Voting is unsupported but will be later this year, enabling interactions where “a creator could use this feature to have their viewers rank their favorite unboxings or reviews.”
You can also upload an image from your camera roll to use as a playlist cover and personalize it with text, filters, or stickers. Alternatively, you can generate AI covers from prompts. To build a custom thumbnail, choose an image from your camera roll, and personalize it with text, filters, or stickers. To generate a thumbnail with AI, tap “Create with AI,” pick a theme, and choose from the AI-powered creations. For more information, visit Google’s help page.
YouTube provides its famous play buttons to recognize its most popular channels. But if you’re not a creator, Google now offers YouTube badges that it says are designed to “celebrate unique-to-YouTube milestones.” Rolling out over the next several weeks, you’ll find these things under the You tab in the mobile YouTube app. For instance, you may earn a badge by becoming one of the first set of paid members of a creator’s channel or correctly completing quizzes. Awards are available on regular YouTube and YouTube Music. On YouTube Music, you’ll earn awards in different ways, including by becoming a top listener of your favorite artist or if a creator hearts your comment.
Google also said that iPhone owners will enjoy improved landscape mode with greater responsiveness, larger thumbnails, and bigger text later in 2024. Plus, YouTube on TVs is getting the visual changes brought to the mobile app and the web, including a new Shorts interface that lets you read the comments or browse the shop without interrupting the video.
All the new features and improvements announced today are now rolling out but will take time to reach all YouTube users. Google has tested many of these features with Premium subscribers via the YouTube experiments page at youtube.com/new.
Source: Google