news hardware YouTube: Two paid features become free
YouTube turned 17 this year. While Google’s video streaming platform remains popular to this day, that doesn’t mean it’s resting on its laurels: that’s why it’s getting some welcome new features this fall.
this is fact YouTube is still a popular video platform among Internet users, 17 years after its launch. But it is still common be tracked by certain social networks, notably TikTok. At a time when trends are changing very quickly, Streaming services like YouTube must constantly innovate to stay in the game.
And this applies even more to the Google platform, which recently got a bad rap for trying to push its users to YouTube Premium. His idea of providing paid access to 4K videos fell through, and that’s arguably no worse. Now YouTube wants to attract Internet users with new features.
Ambient mode lands on YouTube
The first novelty announced by YouTube is none other than ambient mode. The concept of this proposal is as follows: the background of the mobile application, but also the YouTube page adapts to the video. “We took inspiration from the light thrown off screens in a darkened room and wanted to recreate the effect so viewers are drawn right into the content and the video is even more focused on our playback side.”, explains the platform. To deliver this result, YouTube uses dynamic color sampling.
However, this feature is only available when YouTube’s dark mode is enabled.. Therefore, the service also announces that it has improved its proposal on the subject by making the dark mode … darker! The goal: allow the user to benefit from a deeper contrast intended to optimize color reproduction.
Two long-awaited YouTube playback features
But the two features that should really make a difference for users are:
- pinch zoomwhich allows you to zoom in and out of a video across the screen of a mobile device (smartphone, tablet) and keep the zoom level even after pinching,
- The precise search, designed to make it easier for users to find a specific moment within a video. By pausing the video and scrolling the broadcast bar, the user has access to a wide range of recordings, much more complete than what is offered today.
These two new features are available on YouTube starting todaywith the first being limited to mobile applications.
YouTube is changing YouTube Premium
These two suggestions have been tested in YouTube Premium for several months, and they have received positive feedback from paying users. The service says that a large number of the respondents in question felt that these features were actually useful, to the point that it would be interesting to give access to all platform users.
Should we see some kind of mea culpa in this communication regarding the service’s desire to prioritize YouTube Premium above all? Nothing is less safe. As a matter of fact, YouTube’s paid subscription includes testing experimental features, some of which are a regular feature of the free version of the service. We can still appreciate the fact that YouTube doesn’t limit its popular news to people who pay a subscription: let’s just hope it continues in that direction.
