YouTube Will Now Autoplay Videos in Your Home Tab on Mobile Apps
- YouTube is set to enable autoplay for videos on the home tab for mobile users.
- The feature was first seen in YouTube Premium and is now trickling down to the free version of the app.
- The feature will help inflate view counts for channels and also help the content become easier to access.
Google released an autoplay feature in the home tab for the YouTube Premium app quite some time back, and the feature is finally set to be implemented on the free version as well. While it does not offer the same background playback feature that Premium users have access too, it will allow you to view videos directly on the home tab without needing to go to the dedicated landing page of any video.
Coming to Android & iOS over the next few weeks... Autoplay on Home!
Preview a video while you scroll or watch the whole thing on mute w/ captions.
To turn on/off or customize to play only on WiFi, go to Settings > Autoplay > Autoplay on Home.
More → https://t.co/DDh8ZnbJt6 pic.twitter.com/Bm2pDeMqOx
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) December 3, 2018
The new feature will definitely increase the view counts of YouTube videos even if users do not actually see the content. Google revealed that the decision behind implementing the feature mainly had to do with offering an easier way of viewing content on mobile with minimal navigation. Users do not have to worry about accidentally playing videos out loud randomly as all videos will be muted by default and will have captions enabled.
When it comes to YouTubers, they can now take advantage of the new algorithms and create videos in a way that they are attractive enough to draw people from the home page to their channel. Engagement metrics will definitely be boosted thanks to the new change. YouTube product manager David Sharon delved deeper into the changes in an official video. He revealed that Google has been working towards reducing mobile data consumption and Autoplay can help users check out the gist of the content without actually opening up the video at full resolution and wasting data.
There will be three types of captions to categorize the autoplay videos internally – creator-uploaded, crowdsourced and automatic. With content creators spending a lot of time creating thumbnails, there will be a short pause to show off the thumbnails in videos before they actually begin playing.
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