YouTube on Tuesday added new features to its mobile, web, and TV apps, including granular controls for playback speeds, a redesigned mini-player, collaborative playlists and badges.
Until now, users had controls to increase the playback speed in increments of 0.25x. With the latest release, YouTube will let users increase or decrease the playback speed by 0.05x by tapping on the “+” or “-” symbols on the new playback speed control menu.
The company has also made it easier to make collaborative playlists. You can now share a link or a QR code for a playlist with someone, and users can add their own photos as a thumbnail or use YouTube’s gen AI tool to add one using a prompt.
Later in the year, the company will add the ability for collaborators to vote on videos. Creators would also be able to use this feature to get feedback on videos through a playlist.
YouTube is making some design changes to the mobile app as well. On Android, when the app is used in landscape mode, or horizontally, videos now have larger thumbnails and bigger text, and the player is more responsive to inputs as well. These features will come to the iOS app later this year.
YouTube is also improving the mini-player experience, letting users move and adjust the size of the player while browsing YouTube.
The TV app gets more immersive video previews as well as a better UI for watching YouTube Shorts on the big screen.
In August, YouTube started testing a sleep timer for its paid users, and the company is now extending this feature to all users. You can set a timer, after which playback will pause automatically.
YouTube is also adding badges on the YouTube and YouTube Music app to give content creators a new way to engage with their community: the first set has two badges called “first batch of paid members” and “correctly completed a quiz.” This update comes to the Communities space that YouTube launched in September to let users interact with creators.
