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YouTube rolling out some three-dozen new features this fall

Phil Nickinson
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The Digital Trends YouTube channel as seen on an iPhone and on a TV in the background.
Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends

The tweaks keep coming to the world’s largest video provide. Today YouTube is taking the wraps off some three-dozen (more or less) new features. It’s a cross-platform announcement, with the goods hitting phones and tablets, as well as televisions and wherever else you do your YouTube viewing.

Here’s what you have to look forward to:

  • Viewers on smart TVs will find video details in a new vertical menu that YouTube says provides quicker access to the video description and comments, the subscribe button, and video chapters. (Similar improvements will hit web browsers and mobile devices.)
  • Improved audio control is coming to mobile devices. Called “stable volume,” it will level things out so you don’t get blasted by louder parts of a piece of content.
  • Bumping playback to 2x speed will now just require you to press and hold on the player, instead of hunting through menus. This will work across mobile devices, tablets, and in a web browser.
  • You’ll now be able to lock your phone or tablet screen so you don’t accidentally tap your away out of a video.
  • Videos will get larger thumbnails as you scrub your way through to find the good parts. And if you start to seek and then change your mind, you don’t have to guess as hard to go back to where you were.
  • The Library tab and account page are merging to become the “You” tab. That’s where you’ll find previously watched videos (assuming your watch history is turned on), along with playlists, downloads, and purchases. You’ll also find account-related settings and channel info here. This one’s pushing out today, Google says, across mobile devices and on the web.
  • You know how sometimes you know what a song sounds like but don’t know the name? You’ll be able to sing, hum, or play the thing, and YouTube will use AI to suss it out. Unless your singing is just that bad, we reckon.
  • Get ready for more animations when you’re told to like and subscribe. And even more fireworks — literally, but on-screen, of course — when you do actually hit those buttons.
  • You’ll be able to see real-time view and like counts for the first 24 hours.

Like pretty much all Google-based improvements, most of these are rolling out to users all over the world “over the coming weeks.” So if you don’t see them right away, hang in there. They’re coming.

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