YouTube Is Testing A New Way To Recommend Videos While You Watch

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority

Google is once again experimenting with new YouTube Premium features, and this time, it’s all about discovery. Announced today, the new feature is rolling out to Android users and adds recommended videos directly inside your “Now Playing” queue.

When you add a video to your queue after enabling the feature, you can now open that queue to discover a selection of recommended videos based on your viewing habits. It’s one of those small changes that could, in theory, make it easier to find what to watch next without hopping back to the homepage.

Curious to see how well it worked, I queued up a WWE wrestling clip and a music creator’s video, expecting recommendations that matched that mix. Instead, the suggestions felt more like my usual homepage feed rather than being tied to the specific videos I had lined up. However, when I started with a music-only queue, YouTube reliably kept suggesting more songs.

It’s worth noting that these recommended videos aren’t automatically added to your queue or set to auto-play once the queue ends. So while it does save you a trip back to the homepage, you still have to manually pick the next video once your queue runs out.

This feature is available till April 7 for now, and it’s only rolling out to Android devices. In related news, YouTube has extended its Faster Playback Speeds on Mobile experiment until April 7 too, letting users crank videos up to 4x speed (for those who enjoy the challenge of deciphering chipmunk-fast dialogue, I guess).

As with many YouTube Premium features, both of these features are still considered experimental. Whether they become permanent will likely depend on how useful users find them, or how much feedback Google gets on what still needs work.

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