YouTube news: you can save videos and watch them offline

On YouTube Premium you can download your favorite movies and watch them offline. The feature for the moment is active only in the United States

On YouTube Premium, paid version of the now universal free online video service Youtube by Google, comes a feature that will make many users happy: the automatic download of some content, chosen by artificial intelligence based on our tastes and our channel subscriptions.

The novelty has not yet arrived in Italy: it is being tested on a limited number of Android and iOS devices in the United States. The new feature is very reminiscent of Netflix’s automatic download, which, however, concerns only episodes of TV series chosen by the user. On YouTube, on the other hand, you go by topics and not by series (even if there are exclusive YouTube Originals TV series) and this suggests that between experimentation and reality it will take a little more time, but also to the fact that Google wants to seriously compete with other subscription streaming services. After all, the price to pay for YouTube Premium is in line with that of its competitors: 11.99 euros per month, with which we also have access to YouTube Music Premium and YouTube Originals.

How the automatic download works on YouTube

The automatic download of content on YouTube Premium, which allows us to watch it later when we’re offline, is based on our tastes and our previous views. The AI collects all this information, “understands” what we like and proceeds to download additional videos of that type on its own. From the news coming from the US, however, it will be possible to “instruct” the AI by selecting additional topics or removing some of them. Some American users report that it is possible to set automatic downloading of all videos posted on a channel. Downloaded videos will be shown in chronological order in a special Download section of the YouTube Premium app.

A very similar feature is already available on another paid Google service: YouTube Music Premium, the app for watching and listening to music videos on the video streaming platform, allows you to automatically download up to 500 songs selected by the AI based on users’ tastes. However, it’s also good to remember that Google is constantly experimenting with a lot of new features on its products and that they are not always then introduced in the official apps released to the general public.