YouTube has just announced that its “Autoplay on Home” feature is now rolling out to both its Android and iOS applications. This app is not new, but it has not been available to non-paying consumers via the regular YouTube application, so it can be considered new for those of you who do not have a YouTube subscription. In any case, this is basically an autoplay feature which will allow you to preview videos in your feed before firing them up, which you’ll either love or hate, but the good thing is, it can be disabled. As you scroll through your videos, they will start playing with subtitles, but audio will be muted, so you will get a good idea as to what the video is about, which will let you decide whether you’d like to watch it in full or not. You can disable this feature entirely via Settings, or you can simply set it to autoplay only on Wi-Fi. Now, YouTube says that this feature will autoplay videos on your “Home feed”, we’re not sure if that which essentially refers to the first tab in your YouTube app, though this feature should work for your “Subscriptions” as well. We’re not sure at this point, as the feature did not roll out to us just yet, YouTube did say that the feature will roll out over the next couple of weeks, so… you may get it today, or in a week or two, basically. You can check out the animated image down below in order to see what exactly are we talking about here, as that image shows off this feature in action.
Background: If you’re a YouTube Premium member, this feature is probably well-known to you, as it has been available for YouTube Premium member for over half a year at this point. YouTube did say that they’ve had plenty of positive feedback when it comes to this feature, which is why they’ve decided to roll it out to the regular application as well. Google’s YouTube app has not seen much change over the last year, but one notable feature did roll out a couple of months ago, the Dark Mode. You can enable the dark mode via settings inside the app, which will basically make the background dark gray, instead of white, and adapt the whole app around it, which is great if you’re not a fan of light themes, and it’s also great for late night use as well.
Impact: Autoplay on Home can be a really useful feature, and if you don’t like it, for whatever reason, you can always disable it completely, which is always nice, so it won’t be in the way. This feature is not rolling out to YouTube, while the other paid-only feature that users are requesting is still exclusive to paying consumers, the pop-up video option, an option that will let you watch your YouTube video in a small window which can float above pretty much anything, thus letting you do whatever else on the phone while the video is playing. YouTube will hopefully roll out that feature to non-paying consumers in the near future as well.