YouTube, being a beloved child of Google, is always trying out new features for the platform. These upcoming features are often announced early and paid users can even try them out before they are rolled out widely.
As per tradition, YouTube is trying out a variety of new features even right now and some of these have been announced as well.
Press and Hold for 2x
One of the useful features YouTube is experimenting with is the ability to quickly watch videos at 2x speed. Currently, you have to click the gear icon on a video, select playback speed, and then you get to choose how fast you want the video to go. But this will change with an upcoming update.
This update will let you quickly bump up the playback speed to 2x if you press and hold anywhere on the screen while watching a video. This should let you go through longer videos much quicker than before.
Lock Screen.
There are other features coming with this update as well. As the name says, this feature will let you lock the screen to prevent accidental touches that could pause or play a video unintentionally. Lock Screen can be activated by clicking the gear icon and selecting ‘Lock Screen’.
Needless to say, this will only be available on smartphones and tablets.
This should be ideal for when you need to hand your phone to a kid or entertain a pet for a while.
Bigger Seeking Preview
YouTube introduced seeking previews a while ago that would let you find the exact moment you’re looking for while going back and forth in a video. However, these previews are tiny, making it harder to find the right moments in some videos.
For that reason, YouTube is making these previews bigger soon.
As mentioned earlier, you can try all these experimental features already if you are a YouTube Premium subscriber. That being said, there is no clear indication as to when these updates will roll out for the general public.
