YouTube Is Finally Adding a Sleep Timer

Around a month ago, YouTube announced some pretty exciting features coming to the site in 2024, including a brand-new “hype” button joining the like and comment buttons and the ability for creators to organize their content in seasons and episodes. The video-streaming company recently announced another host of features across web, mobile, TV, and YouTube Music today. It says these will gradually roll out over the next few weeks.

Finally, we’re getting a sleep timer on the mobile app. You’d be able to set a timer and have your videos automatically pause when it ends. I’m surprised YouTube didn’t offer it already. I am an avid user of the sleep timer on the Spotify mobile app and am looking forward to YouTube getting one.

You know when you’re watching a YouTube video and putting it on a 2x playback speed feels too fast, but 1.5x is too slow? The streaming service finally has a solution for that. You’d now be able to tweak playback speeds in 0.05 increments on both web and mobile. This will hopefully allow more control of a video’s speed.

A feature I found fairly annoying on the mobile app was that I couldn’t look up another video while watching the one currently playing. Navigating to the search bar would fully minimize the current video and render it unwatchable. With a new update, users can have the mini player minimized to a small tile instead, so they’re not compromising on watching the current video while looking up more to add to the queue.

I take my YouTube very seriously. Apart from the standard ‘Watch Later’ and ‘Liked Videos’ playlists, I have a carefully curated playlist of my favorite content on YouTube that I’m regularly refining and perfecting. It’s good to know that I can now add a nice touch to the playlist by adding a custom thumbnail to it. The thumbnail can be any picture from your photo library or even an AI-generated one that YouTube can make for you. Interestingly, playlists will now accept voting as an option, too. Users can drop a vote on a creator’s public playlist so they can use audience feedback to plan their content.

YouTube is gamifying fans’ loyalty to creators by introducing badges. For instance, if you consistently listen to an artist’s music on the mobile app, you can earn a badge for being their top listener. There’s also a badge for being one of the first paid members of a channel or for correctly completing the quizzes shown before a video starts.

The service is also receiving some light visual changes across mobile, web, and TV. Interestingly, this includes “new pops of pink” which excites me but makes me wonder if YouTube is slowly drifting away from its standard red and black interface.