Google has already bid adieu to the buffering of YouTube’s videos in 2014, when it allowed videos to play offline in areas of low or no internet connectivity. Youtube’s Offline feature has gone a little smarter, this time to save few pennies of data pack costs, reveals a blog post from Google.
New feature, called “Smart Offline”, allows the users to download videos over a night duration, thus enabling the users to enjoy the videos in the morning without buffering. According to Google, this will reduce the data usages almost by half.
“Today, we’re beginning to roll out a feature called Smart Offline on YouTube that lets you takes advantage of these cheaper data rates as offered by your mobile operator, without requiring you to stay up late at night.,” Google commented in the blog post.
To avail the service, users can tap on the ‘grey arrow’ to take video offline, where a prompt will appear giving the option of “Save Overnight”. When the user selects it, the YouTube app will smartly schedule the video to be downloaded offline using the mobile operator’s discounted night data plan, after peak hours of night.
The feature is launched targeting the emerging markets including India where the high-speed data speed is still a challenge. Currently, the feature is made available on Airtel and Telenor in India. According to the company, it’s trying to form collaborations with more telecom operators to make this available to all users.
The users should ensure that their YouTube apps are of latest version and need to be connected to the carrier’s data network to avail this feature. If you're one of the readers who uses YouTube's 'Offline Download ' feature, don't forget to share you experience and views on this new feature.
