Image credit — PhoneArena
YouTube Premium users are now able to automatically download recommended Shorts for offline viewing through a limited-time experiment. The feature, called “Smart Downloads” has been around for some time for regular long-form videos. Now, it is also available for Shorts.
The feature is currently being tested with YouTube Premium users and allows them to automatically download recommended Shorts to their devices. Users can enable the feature by going to the Your Premium benefits section in the YouTube app and selecting the Try experimental new features option. Once enabled, the feature will automatically download recommended Shorts based on the user’s recent viewing history.
YouTube Experiments section offering up Smart Downloads for Shorts as an option on the web and Android
| Image credit — PhoneArena
It’s important to note that currently you can only have one YouTube Experiment active at a time. For example, I currently have the YouTube Redesigned Watch Page experiment active until July 8th, which means that me signing up to try out the new Smart Downloads for Shorts would automatically remove me from the other experiment.
This new feature appears to have been available to some users as early as April, but it has now been rolled out to a wider audience. YouTube Premium members can try out the feature until July 15.Smart Downloads has been available for regular YouTube videos for some time, and it allows users to automatically download recommended videos for offline viewing. The feature is designed to help users save data and watch videos when they don’t have an internet connection.
YouTube is constantly experimenting with new features and ways to improve the user experience. Smart Downloads for Shorts is just one of the many new features that the company is testing, and whether it becomes a permanent feature or not likely depends on user feedback. This means that if you are interested in having a feature like this available for Shorts, make sure to sign up for it to make it known to the powers that it’s worth keeping.