YouTube Premium now lets you skip through videos—at 4x speed!
What's the story
YouTube Premium has added a new capability to let subscribers watch videos at four times the normal speed.
The improved playback speed would let users quickly skim through videos, making it easier to skip introductions, sponsored segments, or review content quickly.
The feature is available on Android and iOS devices until February 26, and can be activated from the YouTube experiments page.
User guide
How to opt in for this feature?
To use the 4x playback speed, users will have to head over to the YouTube experiments page and sign in with their Premium account.
After scrolling down to "Faster Speeds" experiment, they can tap on "Try it out."
If an option to disable this feature appears, faster playback speed has been activated. However, it may take up to an hour for this feature to show on YouTube app after opting in.
Feature rollout
Other experimental features
On January 22, YouTube had announced a bunch of new features to debut on the experiments page.
These included "Jump Ahead" for web, high-quality 256kbps audio for iOS and Android, and iOS-specific features like "Shorts Picture-in-Picture" and "Shorts Smart Downloads."
Most of these experimental features were quickly added to the landing page after the announcement, barring faster playback speeds that has finally appeared.
Experimental initiative
What is YouTube's early access experimental program?
YouTube's early access experimental program, available only for Premium subscribers, lets paying users try out upcoming features before they are released to the general user base.
It also gives YouTube an opportunity to get valuable feedback that can be used to improve or even drop certain features depending on user experience and response.