The latest version of YouTube for Android is getting a new feature that will play to the wants of content creators; Screen Broadcasting. This will make it possible for users to tap a single button within the official YouTube app and have their screen go live, which means they’ll be able to broadcast what they’re doing on their phones, not live broadcast to YouTube using their phone’s camera while recording which was already available.
To get this feature you will need to be on YouTube for Android version 14.31.50, but you will also need to have a YouTube account that meets YouTube’s requirements for being able to go live with the app. This includes having at least 1,000 subscribers and you will need a device that is running on Android Marshmallow or later.
While having a device that is running on Marshmallow isn’t too challenging of a goal to meet as most devices on Android are already running at least this version, not everyone is going to have at least 1,000 people subscribing to their channel.
Then again, if you don’t have at least 1,000 subscribers you may not be creating a ton of content and probably have no use or desire to broadcast your screen in the first place. Of course there are bound to be some people who wish to use it without reaching this subscriber amount, and this is sure to be a restriction that they won’t be happy with.
It’s also worth noting that though this will be in the normal YouTube app, this is still likely to be the most useful for anyone who creates game-related content. YouTube Gaming may be no more but creators who make content that doesn’t revolve around using apps or games on their mobile device probably don’t have much of a reason to broadcast their phone screen.
That said it makes sense that this would be added into the regular YouTube app precisely because YouTube Gaming was shut down earlier this year, and anyone on that platform who streamed their gameplay has likely switched to streaming on YouTube proper.
Because YouTube Gaming was shut down a couple of months ago, anyone that broadcasted mobile gaming specifically has been left without the ability to continue making that kind of content with YouTube from their mobile device or resort to using a different app for the broadcasting features, which could have affected subscriber numbers and viewership. Now with the feature making its way over to the actual YouTube app this sort of broadcasting can resume for those that were taking advantage of it heavily.
The YouTube team isn’t too likely to lower the amount of subscribers needed to get access to the screen broadcasting, so if this sounds like something you want to use, you will unfortunately need to work at raising the amount of subscribers you have, or look for alternative apps that do the same thing and allow you to stream to YouTube, and there are options out there for this so it is possible to utilize screen broadcasting without it being an official YouTube feature.