5 Hidden YouTube Premium Features You Should Be Using – BGR

In a perfect world, you could open a YouTube video and it would start playing straight away. Sadly, we don’t live in a perfect world, and before you can finally watch that YouTube video, you need to sit through some annoying ads first. Sure, ad blockers used to work before, but YouTube started blocking Adblock Plus and similar workarounds. Now, you’re forced to waste a few good seconds on ads. 

If you can’t stand it anymore, there’s always YouTube Premium. Its primary selling point is ad-free videos, which, by itself, is appealing enough to get many people on board. And with YouTube Premium, you can also access YouTube Music Premium for free and have your videos play in the background or downloaded to your device.

But beyond these well-known perks, YouTube Premium has more to offer its users. These features are just hidden in plain view. Here are five of the overlooked YouTube Premium features worth checking out, so you can get more out of your subscription. 

If you haven’t tried YouTube Premium’s experimental features before, then you’re missing out on arguably one of the best perks of the subscription. Experimental features are just that, experiments. They’re essentially beta trials for features that YouTube will either integrate into the system in the future or scratch completely. Yes, they won’t always make it as official features, so while they’re still available, you might as well try them out for fun.

To access YouTube Premium’s experimental features on your desktop browser, all you have to do is visit youtube.com/new. If you’re on mobile, though, follow these steps:

1. Open the YouTube app on your Android or iOS device.
2. Tap your profile picture in the bottom-right corner.
3. Select the settings icon in the top-right corner.
4. Under Account, select “Try experimental new features.”

From here, you can go through the available experimental features and choose the ones you’re interested in. If you want to opt in to those features, just press “Try it out.” You can test more than one at the same time. Conveniently, each feature includes a short description (and tutorial, if applicable), so you’ll know what changes to expect. There’s also a feedback button to share your thoughts about the experimental feature. If you no longer want to participate in a specific feature, you’re free to disable it by selecting “Turn off.”

More often than not, YouTube Premium’s experimental features are around for a set period only. Some features might not be accessible to certain devices or locations. At times, you might not even see any experimental features at all.

When watching a YouTube video on your mobile device, the only controls you can immediately see on screen are the Like, Share, Save, Download, and Report options below the video. Playback controls are only accessible after tapping the video, and further controls require going into the settings. This pretty much disrupts your viewing experience, especially since the menu can block the video. Sure, YouTube did announce a cleaner new interface, but even with these changes, the menu can still hide some portions of what you’re watching.

For a more seamless watching session, YouTube Premium came up with Premium controls. It’s a large control panel that appears under the video (in portrait mode) or next to it (in landscape mode). It lets you control what you’re watching without covering any part of the video. From the Premium controls panel, you’ll see the playback controls for playing and pausing, skipping forward or back ten seconds, and going to the next or previous video. There’s also a button for liking the video, saving it, changing the speed, switching to a different quality, and enabling/disabling Stable Volume.

To turn on Premium controls, here’s what you need to do:

1. Open your YouTube mobile app and play a video.
2. Tap the video to bring up the playback controls.
3. Go to the gear icon in the upper-right corner.
4. Choose “More.”
5. Tap “Premium controls.”

Of note, some users may see a “Premium controls” button immediately after tapping the video to bring up the playback controls. In these cases, you don’t need to tap the gear icon and choose “More.”

Either way, after selecting “Premium controls,” the control panel will pop up and you can start tinkering with the controls to your liking. As of this writing, only the YouTube app on Android, iOS, and iPadOS devices features Premium controls. It isn’t offered on the web yet.

Every time you screen-share the YouTube site in a video conference, your privacy is compromised. Everyone will see your YouTube home page, search history, and the types of videos you watch. To solve this, YouTube Premium introduced co-watching via Google Meet. It essentially allows you to play the same YouTube video on all the meeting participants’ own YouTube apps. That means they’ll see their own home page and watch history, not yours.

At the moment, co-watching is exclusive to Android devices. You and the participants need to be on Android with YouTube installed. They don’t have to be YouTube Premium members to join the meeting, though. To start a co-watching Google Meet session, here’s what you need to do:

1. Launch Google Meet on your Android device.
2. Tap “New” to start a new meeting.
3. Select “Create link.”
4. Tap “Join.”
5. Press “Join” again.
6. Go to “Share invite.”
7. Share the link with others via your preferred app.
8. Accept the people joining by tapping on the popup at the bottom.

Once you’re ready to start co-watching, follow this guide:

1. Tap the overflow menu (three vertical dots) in the bottom-right.
2. Go to “Tools.”
3. Choose “YouTube.”
4. Press “Open YouTube.”
5. Play the video you want to watch together.
6. On the “Start a Meet activity?” popup, hit “Start.”
7. On your participants’ end, ask them to select “Join” on the popup that opens.

The video you’re watching should automatically play in the participants’ YouTube apps. If it doesn’t, simply go back to the meeting by maximizing the floating Meet preview and hit “Return” on the “Activity on YouTube” banner at the top. From here, you or the participants can play and pause the video and skip through preferred segments with the scrubber. Anyone in the meeting can also start a different video anytime.

YouTube Premium gets rid of YouTube’s own ads, but unfortunately, it doesn’t remove the sponsored segments baked into the videos themselves. To automatically skip over them on the web, you can install an essential Google Chrome extension called SponsorBlock. If you’re on the mobile app, you’d normally have to fast-forward the video yourself. 

Thankfully, YouTube Premium now offers a feature called “Jump ahead,” available on desktop, mobile, smart TVs, and even game consoles. What it does is fast-forward the videos straight to the section viewers usually jump to, no matter how far ahead that is. It’s like fast-forward on steroids, but powered by watch data and AI. No, Jump ahead wasn’t developed specifically for skipping sponsored ads. But if most users are skipping the sponsored segment in a video, Jump ahead will do the same for you. 

To activate Jump ahead while watching a video, press “L” on your keyboard (desktops), double-tap the right side of the video (phones or tablets), or double-press the right arrow key on your remote (smart TVs). On desktop or mobile, the “Jump ahead” button will then appear, and you can hit it to skip the sponsored segment. On smart TVs, the sponsored segment will be automatically skipped.

If it jumped too far ahead, just go back manually with the scrubber or rewind gesture (double-tap on the left of the screen). Note that you might need to be in a specific segment of the video before Jump ahead shows up, and it might not show up at all on some videos. That just means there’s little viewer data for that specific video, the content isn’t in a supported language, or the video is a premiere, live stream, show, movie, or Short.

Subscribing to YouTube Premium means you can now download YouTube videos on your iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. These offline videos come in handy when you’ll be visiting a remote area with no reliable internet connection, or hopping on a long flight for a work trip. While this is a nifty feature, the challenge is actually remembering to download what you want to watch. The worst part is that you only realize your mistake when you’re already disconnected from the internet. That’s where Smart downloads come to your rescue.

Smart downloads is a YouTube Premium feature hidden in the Settings menu and designed to save recommended videos — which are based on your watch history — to your device. Unlike the usual download option, it quietly works in the background without the need for user input. As long as you’re connected to Wi-Fi, the videos in your recommended section will be downloaded and ready for when you go offline. Here’s how you can enable Smart Downloads:

1. Open YouTube on your phone or computer.
2. Select your profile picture.
3. Open the settings menu.
4. Choose “Downloads” (Android or the web) or “Background & downloads” (iOS or iPadOS).
5. Enable the toggle next to “Smart downloads.”

Once Smart downloads is enabled, you’re free to change the downloads’ video quality and limit how much storage space they consume. Simply open “Adjust Smart downloads” to find these options. Like the manually downloaded videos, you can access the Smart downloads in the Downloads page on your profile. If you find a downloaded video you’re not interested in, you can remove it by pressing the three vertical dots in the video controls and selecting “Delete from downloads.” Smart Downloads also automatically replaces the downloaded videos with new ones every seven days.