While the Big Y platform embraces a graphic indicator that will avoid the boring parts of a long video, the Music spin-off benefited from a very rich update on wearables animated by Wear OS.
Listen to this article
YouTube, the well-known streaming platform of Alphabet (formerly known as Google), has started its weekly turning point with two important innovations, including one concerning the spin-off YouTube Music conceived as the heir of Play Music.
The first news related to YouTube concerns the spin-off YouTube Music which has reached the 5.06.40 release on smartwatches with Wear OS. With this update two much-awaited opportunities come: it starts with the possibility of streaming music, without first having to download it off-line when possible, using Wi-Fi or, if present on the wearable, LTE connectivity. Thanks to this improvement, being implemented this week, it will no longer be necessary to have a smartphone nearby to stream the thousands of playlists or one of the over 80 million songs on the platform from the wrist: unfortunately, a requirement to be able to having this improvement remains and is very stringent, since it is required to have a subscription, to YouTube Music Premium, or to YouTube Premium.
The other implementation brought as a dowry to YouTube Music with the 5.06.40 release scheduled for Wear OS concerns the provision of a new pane or tile, which can be found and installed from the Wear OS smartphone app, or by swiping to the right until you reach the Tiles, then press and hold on the newcomer to add it. At that point, the user will have access to the last music played, while – by tapping the “Browse” item – he will be taken to the navigation page in the app. If there is already music playing, the box will simply show the current track: at this juncture, touching the box will reveal the “music controls in the app”.
The second novelty concerns YouTube standard and is part of a whole series of functions, some already implemented, with others still to come, aimed at unpacking the long videos to improve their management, just think of the function of the chapters, the one that allows you to play a part of a video in loop, and to that – soon to be tested on YouTube Premium – which will allow you to search for the exact point you want to watch.
Specifically, it is an improvement, previously tested by subscribers of the platform, which allows (on the web and mobile side) to find more easily the points of the video most played by the YouTube community: this is done through a graph placed on the bar progress that, where higher, indicates to the common user the points most reproduced by users, allowing to discard others that, in a long video, may be less interesting, while creators will draw the useful indication of understanding at a glance what “the spectators want to see”.