Among the changes we already saw come to the Google Camera and the debut of the Chrome remote desktop app, Google also updated the YouTube app today with some great new features that should make anyone happy to have it. YouTube gets updated to version 5.6.31, and brings along what is probably the most important feature, which is live video casting to the Chromecast HDMI dongle. There are some other smaller tweaks and changes to the app as well, but we’ll get to those in a bit. First, lets go over the Chromecast feature that was just added in.
This isn’t exactly a new feature for YouTube altogether, rather just a new feature for the Android app. The live video casting was already previously available through the browser, but it’s nice to see it come to the app as well so people can access it from their mobile devices. Past this new capability for use with the Chromecast, it seems that users can now also add and change captions for videos, and if you venture into the settings menu within the application the preloading section is now missing. The preloading feature for those of you who might have been unaware, was aimed at allowing users to preload or “fetch” videos and video subscriptions in advance when your device was connected to Wifi and charging, so that if you encountered a slower network connection at a later point you could enjoy the videos normally without interruption. We’re not really sure why this option would disappear as it seems like a useful one to have, especially for those users who have a slower network or commonly travel through areas where their network speeds slow down.
The watch later section of the app is said to have undergone a change itself, sporting a slightly altered appearance to what it had before. The update should already be rolling out to plenty of users if it hasn’t already, although it has not updated for me personally just yet, so I still have no idea what the visual changes were to the watch later menu. The updates will probably continue rolling out to users over the next day or so, but if you can’t wait and would like to use the live video casting feature you can always often check your app updates menu inside the play store.