Google has a huge amount of services under their wing, and many of these have been used countless times to make Android an attractive proposition for those switching from iOS or elsewhere. One of those services however, is something that we very much think of as being for everyone and a cross-platform app, YouTube. While the platform might be dealing with some “drama” issues at the moment, as well as a change in advertising guidelines that has not gone down well, YouTube is still massive. The Android app has undergone a number of revisions over the years, and now, it appears like a couple of new features are coming to the app in future updates.
Android Police has taken a look at the latest version of the YouTube app, version 11.38, and they found evidence that Google are in the process of adding a few things. First up is the ability to double-tap to seek within a video. Exactly how users will be able to fast-forward or rewind within a video using such a feature is unclear, but it’s likely that this new double-tap feature will be something that will open up a seek bar users can then manipulate to find their favored spot in the video they’re watching. YouTube has been known to offer more advertising revenue for videos that are longer than 10-minutes, so it’s no surprise they’re looking to make it easier for users to seek in longer videos.
As well as this, it looks like YouTube is about to add a global resolution setting in a future update. The code that Android Police found points out resolutions all the way down to the dreaded 144p up to 1080p. This leaves out 1440p for 2K videos as well as 2160p for 4K videos. Being able to limit your streaming to a resolution would help people curb their data usage, as well as make videos load quicker, too. This code was found within the 11.38 version of the YouTube app, but when these new features land is anyone’s guess, but they don’t appear to be too far off in the future.