YouTube to offer more granular playback speed controls, collaborative playlists, and more

YouTube is enhancing the miniplayer experience in its mobile app, allowing users to resize and move it around while browsing videos

YouTube on October 15 unveiled a range of new features, along with visual and product enhancements, to its mobile, web, and television apps as part of its efforts to improve the user experience. These features are expected to be rolled out to all users in the coming weeks.

The Google-owned video sharing platform will offer more granular playback speed controls, allowing users to increase or decrease speeds in increments of 0.05x, instead of the earlier 0.25x.

YouTube is also making it easier for users to create collaborative playlists with their friends and family. One can share a link or a QR code with others to enable them to make additions to playlists.

"A really good use case might be: I'm having a party, I want to invite my friends over, I want to watch some comedy together, I put on my favorite comedy videos, and then I ask them, and they could just add theirs to it; we can pop it on the TV and sit and watch together" YouTube chief product officer Johanna Voolich said in a video clip.

A look at YouTube's collaborative playlists (Image: YouTube)

Users can design their own custom thumbnails for playlists using their own photos or create new ones with the company's generative AI feature "Create with AI," wherein people can pick a theme and choose from the AI-powered creations.

Later this year, users will be able to vote on videos in playlists. Creators will be able to use this feature to get feedback on their videos, the company said.

Sleep Timer, a feature that lets people set a timer to automatically pause videos after a certain duration of time, is being rolled out to all YouTube users across mobile devices. The service initially tested this feature with its premium members in August.

YouTube is also enhancing the miniplayer experience in its mobile app, allowing users to resize and move it around while browsing videos. In landscape mode, the app will display larger thumbnails and text on Android, with support for iOS coming later this year.

Other features include badges on YouTube and YouTube Music mobile apps that celebrate key milestones within the YouTube community, such as being one of the first set of paid members of a creator’s channel, being a top listener of their favorite artist, having a creator like your comment or correctly completing quizzes.

YouTube Shorts, the service's bite-sized video feature, is getting a new user interface on the TV app that will offer continued interaction with the content without interrupting the viewing experience.

YouTube's TV app will also offer immersive video previews on channel pages, a feature that was first announced last month.