Tech Desk 
Jan 23, 2025
YouTube on Wednesday, announced that it is integrating new experimental features for Premium users, including high-quality audio, a faster playback speed option on mobile, and the ability to “jump ahead” on the web to skip to the more intriguing part of the video.
The company said users can now enable an experimental feature, letting them listen to music videos with a higher audio bitrate — up to 256kbps. Notably, YouTube Music already offers this quality for audio listening when you turn up the settings to High in the playback settings.
On mobile, picture-in-picture can be helpful if you want to reply to a text or an email or check something else instantly during a video. One of the new tests allows users to play YouTube Shorts in the picture-in-picture mode on iOS.
Currently, YouTube is integrating the option to turn on smart downloads for Shorts on iOS — when you turn on smart downloads, YouTube automatically downloads videos that may interest you when you have a good connection.
This will help you watch them offline without an internet connection. Both of these features were already available to Android users.
Moreover, YouTube allows you to watch them at up to 4x speed on mobile. Until now, the users could set 2x as the highest playback speed. Google is also expanding two YouTube-related AI features. For YouTube Music, the company is expanding its “Ask Music” feature to the UK and Ireland.
It is important to note that the company said this feature will soon be available to iOS users.
