One of the biggest gripes of YouTube is that you are not able to view videos from your favourite channels offline. Natively, you cannot download videos you watch on YouTube and this means you have to be online everytime.
You can however access these videos offline, but through avenues like YouTube Red, their new subscription service that is only available in the US as of now. Now Google has announced that users from Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa can now access offline playback for videos that that are available in these countries.
So how do you access offline playback? For certain videos, you only need to tap on the “more” icon located on the right side of a video, choose the resolution according to your data plan and that’s it. However, there is a restriction: The videos that have been saved for offline playback can be played for upto 48 hours.
This new development is great for a continent that does not enjoy the highest data transfer speeds and in some areas, the internet connection is spotty and unreliable. This will be great if you are annoyed by the constant buffering notification thanks to a poor data connection or if you are busy at the moment and you would like to see the video later. The fact that they added an option to choose the file size is important so that the video may not max out your limited data balance.
Google also promises that offline playback “is just a start” and are “working on even more ways to make video content more affordable and accessible to our growing base of mobile users in the region.”
Source: Google Africa Blog
