2024 has been an exceptionally eventful year for Google and the developers at YouTube. The platform tested several polarizing features, but a lot changed on the user-facing side as well. As one of the biggest entertainment apps on Android, YouTube sometimes struggles to lead the way with evolution and refinement, but this past year, the company tightened the sails.
We saw everything from Google’s valiant battle against ad blockers to new interface design and functional features. However, there are seven changes that really make a difference to the experience we will share, going into 2025.
1 YouTube got costlier
A big hike, and bigger crackdowns
YouTube offers an ad-supported tier where you don’t need to cough up cash, but some features and an ad-free experience are exclusive to Premium subscribers. It was a small fee until recently, but this year, Google hiked the prices across the board. Less than a year after the November 2023 hike, Google increased prices again in September 2024 by as much as 50% in some markets and at least by 10% in others, making YouTube Premium costlier than rival streaming services. Premium also forayed into 10 new markets, making the users there eligible for student discounts on Premium, and the regular membership benefits.
Expanded availability didn’t deter people from incessant attempts to obtain Premium features for free, or cheap. YouTube cracked down on signups for Premium using VPNs to spoof locations where prices were cheaper. It also went after unauthorized third-party apps like ReVanced, while on the web, the devs slowed loading times and even skipped videos outright if an ad blocker was detected. These measures seem drastic and desperate, but are the only way to keep a free, ad-supported tier alive alongside YouTube Premium.
2 Ad segment injection got imaginative
Born from necessity
While we are on the subject of subscriptions and ads, it would be remiss to skip YouTube’s sheer ingenuity in deterring freeloader and ad-blocking users. The platform tried several new methods to force ad segments down users’ throats.
To outsmart ad-blocking browser extensions, YouTube also dabbled with the idea of server-side ad injection, making the advert a part of the original video stream. While most users can’t tell when this method is used, the only way freeloaders can avoid it would require community reporting to identify the timestamp for the ads in every video, just like sponsored segments.
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The video service also launched pause ads on TV to the dismay of many users. These show up when you pause the content to take a break, just like they would on cable TV. However, YouTube believes these are less disruptive, but it also doesn’t mention if pause ads will reduce the frequency of regular ones that interrupt video playback.
3 A treasure trove of UI updates
So many new design elements
YouTube is a mature platform and a lot of its perceived improvement comes from design refinement that makes the interface more user-friendly. Besides all the experiments that came and went, or were Premium-only, a few changes left their mark in 2024. Continuing with the ads, Google stopped showing us the countdown timer for the Skip button on both mobile and the web. The slight change is here to stay, and the platform hopes you might inadvertently watch more ads.
On both platforms, you’ll also notice a custom playback speed setting, so you can slow down or speed up videos in 0.05x increments. Its an improvement from the coarse presets in 0.5x increments we had until now, but the range — up to 2x faster or 0.25x slower — remains unaltered. YouTube on the web switched to a translucent top bar and the bottom bar on mobile got the same treatment, shifting from solid colors. The change makes for a smoother scrolling experience, all while leaving the buttons clearly visible.
As for mobile-specific tweaks, you’ll see a new mini player with a prominent Pause button flanked by rewind and forward options. The new one is larger than the deprecated design which only had options to Play/Pause or close the mini player. That said, users are still divided about this change.
4 All things AI
Still testing the waters
2024 also marks the second year in Google’s AI push since ChatGPT took the world by storm. The ripples of advances in Gemini were felt on YouTube, too. The company didn’t launch any game-changing AI features for users, but ran experiments for creators to use AI for restyling licensed music, resembling the AI wallpaper generator that shipped with Pixel phones. From an accessibility standpoint, AI made YouTube better with dubbing support offered to creators who wanted to transcend language barriers and reach a wider audience with dubbed audio. Viewers will see the dubbed language in the video player settings.
Meanwhile, the company has also kept up a stiff front to deter third parties like OpenAI and others from training their AI models using otherwise publicly available videos. YouTube also introduced a new settings toggle in Creator Studio, so copyright owners of uploaded content can choose to opt out of third-party AI training on a per-video basis. However, the company does not mention Gemini in this, so one can presume YouTube content is helping Google improve its AI — a competitive advantage it doesn’t want to share.
5 Timestamp sharing on mobile
Catching up to the web
While AI certainly helps YouTube become more user-friendly, the platform’s web UI still leads the charge in terms of feature support and addition, even though one could argue the Android and iOS apps draw in millions of users. The lack of feature parity is surprising when you consider that YouTube for Android didn’t support sharing time-stamped video URLs until late in 2024.
On the web, clicking the Share button brings up a floating window with a shareable URL and a checkbox that adds the current timestamp or a custom one to the link. With this component, the recipient can start watching the specific segment that you share. The feature seems basic and has been a web UI staple for years now, but was only added to mobile this year.
Simpler interaction between viewers
Although YouTube merely tested this feature for a short while in June 2024, it deserves a mention here because it exemplifies the platform’s determination to improve. In this test, YouTube borrowed a trick from the playbook for social media companies like Reddit and X (formerly Twitter). It allowed a handful of creators to tag users in the comments. Until now, the only way to tag a user in the comments was to reply to a comment they have already made, and YouTube would preface your comment with an @ followed by their username.
With this test, some creators could tag others without replying per se, or creating a comment thread. To the average user, this would make the comments section easier to parse and more orderly overall. It also ties in nicely with the creator handles YouTube introduced in 2022, so you can use either the channel name or the person’s handle to tag them. We haven’t seen this roll out at scale this past year, but hope to.
7 Switch to AV1 video encoding
Technical details
A lot has changed behind the scenes, but the biggest change of 2024 in the public eye would be YouTube’s switch to AV1 encoding. Since so many modern smartphones ship with high-resolution displays that make 4K content watchable on the go, the demand for high-res streaming has increased substantially in recent times. To keep up, Google used the March 2024 security patch to enable support for VideoLAN’s “libdav1d” AV1 decoder on devices running Android 12 and newer versions — a codec developed by the team behind the VLC media player.
A senior YouTube exec also announced a simultaneous switch to AV1 encoding by default for videos, and it should’ve worked perfectly. However, apps need to state their intent to use the new libdav1d decoder explicitly, or Android defaults to the older libgav1, and YouTube didn’t specify this during the initial rollout. People using older hardware weren’t too pleased with the accelerated battery wear since YouTube won’t use hardware acceleration for decoding with libdav1d.
8 Honorary mentions
Subtle quality-of-life bits
Since so much has changed and we can only include so many changes that stood out, here are a few that are certainly worth a mention. YouTube finally gave Premium users the option of setting up a sleep timer for videos — a feature borrowed from YouTube Music. The company also announced plans to tackle blatant use of clickbait titles and thumbnails in December. This drive starts with videos in India, but we hope to see the crackdown expand globally.
In some situations, YouTube might be the first resource that comes to mind for handling emergency situations, and to help in such times, the platform has pinned a new first-aid information shelf atop the search results for emergencies like choking, CPR, heart attack, stroke, seizure, overdose, and bleeding. This can save your precious seconds looking for the right content to assist when required.
Source: YouTube
As for Shorts, which miraculously aren’t on an independent app yet, YouTube upped the duration limit again. What started as 30-second clips are now minute-long, and the platform has tripled that in 2024. So, three-minute videos are auto-categorized as Shorts now, and creators can use the Shorts revenue-sharing model for them. However, the Shorts camera feature in the YouTube app is still capped at minute-long videos. YouTube also gave Shorts content a purpose besides being engagement bait this year, with links to look for longer, related videos quickly.
Looking forward to another year of changes
While 2024 was fun for creators and viewers alike, the impact AI made on YouTube left a lot to be desired. In 2025, we hope to see that change for the better with deeper Gemini integration so you aren’t forced into as much hands-on interaction. With Android XR coming into the picture as well, YouTube on XR could be another interesting experience to look forward to. That doesn’t mean the service hasn’t kept up with the times.
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