Source: YouTube
YouTube’s always tinkering with its service, testing new features that could one day become standard parts of the public-facing experience. In one of its more recent tests, the company started cracking down on ad blockers and also announced it would experiment with dubbing videos using AI. Although some of these are introduced without any announcement, other test features are openly made available, with some being designated exclusively to those that are subscribed to the company’s Premium service.
As of now, the company does have two tests running, with details on its experimental features page and spotted by the folks at The Verge. One enables a Lock Screen that disables touch input when watching a video, and another, a more recent addition, gives users the ability to long press anywhere on the screen in the YouTube app to enable 2x playback speed. The latter of the two is the latest test feature being offered to Premium subscribers, giving users a quicker way to access 2x playback.
Currently, in order to access this setting in the mobile app, users need to enter the setting menu of a video by tapping the gear icon, then adjust the playback speed to their liking. This is quite different from the desktop experience where playback speed is easily accessible from the main playback window. Of course, this feature may only have limited use, but it could be a game changer for some.
Those with a Premium subscription can access the aforementioned feature until August 13. As far as the Lock Screen feature goes, users will be able to use this feature until August 5. In order to activate the Lock Screen while playing videos, users will need to tap the gear icon and select Lock Screen. For the most part, these are pretty interesting features, but is it something that you would like to see included as part of the standard experience?