YouTube Go, New YouTube App for offline viewing and sharing Launched
While still celebrating its birthday, Google has announced YouTube Go, a brand new app designed for users of YouTube to enjoy more of the videos and music they love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world.
Taking after Facebook’s Free Basic, YouTube Go is designed and developed to work more effectively in areas where internet connectivity is more limited. YouTube Go allows users to save videos for offline viewing, giving options over quality and file size so it’s clear how much data a download will use. The app also allows for local sharing with nearby users without using any data.
YouTube Go is as a result of extensive research done across 15 cities in India by teams of engineers, designers, and researchers collecting ideas and testing prototypes with hundreds of people. Over the next few months, YouTube will be rolling the app out gradually to more testers, getting their feedback and improving the product before launching it to the general public.
YouTube product management, VP Johanna Wright says in a statement: “We’ve always believed that connectivity should not be a barrier to watching YouTube. YouTube Go is a brand new app to help the next generation of users share and enjoy videos”
“In 2014 we launched YouTube Offline so you could watch videos without suffering from buffering. A few months ago we rolled out Smart Offline, a feature that allows you to schedule videos to be saved offline later at off-peak times when there’s more bandwidth so data is faster and cheaper. But we realized that for the next generation of YouTube users to fully discover all that YouTube has to offer, we had to re-imagine the YouTube mobile app from the ground up,”
“YouTube Go was designed and built from the ground up with insights from India, in order to bring the power of video to mobile users in a way that is more conscious of their data and connectivity, while still being locally relevant and social.”
Designed with four concepts in mind, the app is relatable, with videos and a user interface that is made for you. It is designed to be offline first and work even when there’s low or no connectivity.
It’s also cost-effective, tackling the cost of data usage and giving users more transparency about how big downloads and file sizes will be. And finally, it’s a social experience, connecting you with the people and content you care about.
Amongst a few notable features, the app includes find and discover relatable videos right on the home screen, preview videos before you save or watch, choose your resolution when saving or streaming videos, amongst others.
YouTube Go will gradually roll out to more people over the next few months, getting their feedback and improving the product before launching it globally. The company hasn’t announced an official date, but users in India can sign up on this page to be notified when it arrives.
