The YouTube Go which was announced by Google in celebration of its 18th anniversary last year in September has been released – the beta version, though.
For those who are not aware of it now, the new YouTube Go app allows you to save videos to your device or SD card storage for offline viewing which lowers data usage, especially when on mobile data and not Wi-Fi.
The interesting app, according to Google, is dedicated mainly for YouTube users in India with slow internet and other regions, particularly developing countries (definitely Nigeria too) where experiences of connectivity nightmares are prevalent. The YouTube Go App also allows for previewing, watching and sharing of YouTube videos offline.
Functionality-wise, the App works like the regular YouTube app, but whenever a user selects a video of choice, YouTube Go will display a screen asking if you would love to download the video instead or you would rather proceed to view it.
On the App, videos are available for download in two qualities; The “Basic quality”, with a resolution of 144p and The “Standard quality” with a suggested resolution of 360p. There is, however, no HD quality videos here. This isn’t surprising as Google not only target region of low/poor internet connectivity but also devices with small storage capacity.
One other significant highlight of the App is the ability to share the save/downloaded videos with other Youtube Go users through Bluetooth via the in-app interface. Once the video is received on the other end, a 15KB “security check” which requires connection to the internet allows the video to be played by the receiving party.
An unreleased or unofficial (so to speak) version of the app can be installed but may be unstable during usage. YouTube Go has an install size of 6.77 MB and runs on devices with Android Jellybean 4.1 and above.
It would be recalled that Youtube rolled out “Mobile Live Streaming” feature to creators who have over 10,000 subscribers this week. The mobile live streaming enables live streaming between celebrities and their fans and also serves as another money making a medium for celebrities or video publishers through SuperChat where viewers of live video purchase chat messages that are highlighted in bright colours and pinned to the chat window for 5 hours.
