YouTube Premium’s 4x speed and other experimental features now available to subscribers

Jan 31, 2025 05:16 AM - 1 week ago 11287

Antonio G. Di Benedetto is a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent complete 15 years successful the photography manufacture earlier joining The Verge arsenic a deals writer successful 2021.

After announcing immoderate caller experimental features for YouTube Premium subscribers earlier this period — and that aggregate experiments tin beryllium tested astatine erstwhile — the institution has added 1 it promised was connected the way: the expertise to watch videos astatine 4x speed, as reported by Android Police. I’m personally a 1.5x to 2x sicko erstwhile it comes to YouTube videos and podcasts, but 4x is an perfectly blistering velocity that’s much apt for skipping past the cruft than consuming info astatine a faster clip.

The faster playback is conscionable 1 of a fewer experiments you tin presently try (with immoderate OS and clip restrictions):

4x playback velocity (iOS and Android only, until February 26th)
Shorts Smart Downloads (iOS only, until February 19th)
Shorts Picture-in-Picture (iOS only, until February 19th)
High Quality Audio for 256kbps sound (iOS and Android only, until February 22nd)
Jump Ahead Web (for web browsers, until February 5th)

In akin just-get-to-the-point-already fashion, Jump Ahead gives web users a fastener to automatically skip to “the contented they attraction astir faster” alternatively of cautiously scrubbing done a video. But let’s beryllium honest, this will astir apt beryllium a fastener to jump past each the intros and different bloat.

An animated illustration showing really Jump Ahead useful connected a web browser.

The faster playback velocity and Jump Ahead features look the astir useful — if you’re already a YouTube Premium subscriber who doesn’t person to beryllium done ads, the adjacent frontier is skipping done each the cruft. Though higher value audio is ever welcome. And a picture-in-picture mode for Shorts could beryllium convenient, but arsenic was mentioned connected a caller Vergecast, why would you want YouTube to automatically capable your phone’s retention pinch tons of Shorts videos?