Highlights
- You can now search for songs by humming, playing or singing on YouTube.
- There’s also a new ‘You’ tab where you’ll find all your history and account information.
- Here’s a look at the top new features on YouTube.
YouTube has announced a ton of new features for its mobile apps, tablet and the web as well. There’s a new ‘stable volume’ feature, bigger preview thumbnails, lock screen, search songs by humming, and more. The new YouTube features have started rolling out, and will reach all users globally over the coming weeks.
New YouTube features
- Easier button for playback speed: When you’re watching videos in full screen or portrait mode, you can press and hold down anywhere on the player to increase the playback speed to 2x. You can just let go when you reach the part of the video you want to watch. This feature will be available on the mobile and tablet apps, and on the web as well.
- Bigger preview thumbnails: YouTube will now start showing bigger preview thumbnails while you seek. For those unaware, the seek feature lets you get to the part of the video you want to watch. You can do this with a long press on the screen and sliding right left with thumbnail previews. It’s also easier now to go back to where you started while you seek. This can be done by moving your finger to where you started, and lifting it when you feel a vibration.
- Lock screen: This feature will let you prevent accidental touches while watching videos on YouTube by locking your screen.
- Stable volume: As the name suggests, stable volume will offer a balanced volume level that should help reduce differences in volume. This feature has started rolling out, and it will be automatically turned on.
- Search songs by humming: YouTube is finally giving users the option to search for songs on the platform by humming a tune. You can also play or sing a song so YouTube can identify, which it will by using AI to match the sound to the original recording. YouTube is rolling this feature out in the coming weeks but only for Android devices at first.
- New You tab: There’s a new ‘You’ tab that shows all your previously watched videos, playlists, downloads and purchases along with your account-related settings and channel information. The You tab is replacing the Library tab on the web, mobile and tablets.
- Vertical menu on smart TVs: A new vertical menu is available for YouTube on smart TVs. You can access this by clicking on the title while watching a video, and the menu will appear. This vertical menu offers quicker access to features such as the video description, comments, and the subscribe button.
- YouTube is rolling out similar improvements on the web and mobile as well. A scrollable description with a cleaner design will be available on mobile and web.
YouTube has launched some features for creators too. It is adding visual cues that will appear when a creator ask viewers to like or subscribe to their channel. The visual cues will be in sync with the buttons that viewers can tap on, and when they do playful sparkles will appear (yay!). There’s also a new animation for view count and like count in real time for the first 24 hours.
