YouTube Premium, the $11.99 ad-free version of YouTube, today introduces a number of new features aimed at attracting and retaining subscribers. Most notably, the subscription plan will now include higher quality videos for web and iOS users, support for watching shared FaceTime videos through Apple’s SharePlay, and other controls for managing your queue on mobile devices.
The company believes that the broader set of features will help it better market the subscription to consumers, as many don’t know what YouTube Premium provides other than removing ads from YouTube. The launches also follow other recent additions, such as the ability to pick up watching videos where you left off on any device and a Smart Downloads feature that automatically saves recommended videos for offline access. This last feature is now available to web users as well, in addition to iOS and Android.
Image credits: YouTube’s “Continue Watching” feature
While many of these previous features have subtly enhanced a YouTube Premium subscription – running in the background where the end user might not even notice – today’s newly announced additions will be even more important to your viewing experience.
For starters, YouTube will start rolling out an improved bitrate version of 1080p HD video quality to Premium subscribers on iOS and then the web in the coming weeks. (On the web, it will first become available as a “trial” — a YouTube Premium offering that allows subscribers early access to test new features before a public release.) While all YouTube users will continue to have access to 1080p, 1080p Enhanced, YouTube says the quality setting will make clips Videos look “cleaner and clearer”, including those with a lot of detail and motion, such as sports and games. If implemented successfully, this could help YouTube Premium better live up to its name in terms of providing subscribers with a “premium” experience, not just a less annoying experience by removing ads.
Another major addition is Apple’s SharePlay support, first introduced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in 2021. Although other video services have long supported SharePlay, including competitors like Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, and TikTok, YouTube will limit access so that only paying subscribers can use the co-watching feature. This puts the service in a different space from rival TikTok, which was among the first to support Apple’s co-watching feature for FaceTime users.
Of course, SharePlay now feels a bit like a pandemic-era solution designed to connect people who otherwise wouldn’t be together in real life. Netflix, for example, has not bothered to launch its own official syndicated viewing option, having apparently bet on refusal to use something like the lifting of Covid restrictions. So it’s interesting to see YouTube trying to market SharePlay as a “feature” rather than standard functionality, especially when the co-viewing solution within Google Meet already allows co-watching for YouTube without the Premium upgrade.
Another new feature provides more control over your queue when you subscribe to YouTube Premium. Starting today, Premium users will be able to add videos to their queue when watching on phones and tablets. While today’s free YouTubers can save videos to playlists, including Watch Later, Queue allows users to control which video they want to play next during their current viewing session.
The updates join other YouTube Premium features, which, beyond ad-free viewing, include background play for watching when the screen is locked, offline downloads, and access to YouTube Music Premium.