Earlier when Google launched the Android One platform in India, they also announced the support for offline playback for YouTube videos in India. Now, the feature has been rolled out to users in India. With this new feature, users can now download videos to their Android and iOS device for later consumption when without usable network connectivity. You can download YouTube videos using the Wi-Fi connection on your smartphone.
The downloaded video will be only available for 48 hours to avoid issues involved with the free downloading of copyrighted content. Here is how to start downloading YouTube videos. If you are in India, Indonesia And Philippines, the YouTube app has been updated to support this feature. So once you have updated the YouTube app, open the video which you want to download.
You can see a new icon for download along side the video. Hit this icon and you will be provided with an option to select the download quality of the video along with size of the download. Once you have selected the video quality it will be added to offline list. You can view the offline list from the menu on the sidebar.
Just like the online version, ads will be downloaded alongside the video, and these will be refreshed once the user re-syncs to YouTube. The re-syncing process allows YouTube to calculate metrics such as views and ad data.
This new feature is very useful if you are travelling, you can download videos and watch them for around 2 days while on the move.
Note: Remember not all videos can be taken offline and some videos might show this error “Sorry, this video can’t be taken offline” message. YouTube does not clearly mention what is the criteria for videos to be available offline. So in case you encounter this issue, you will not be able to view the video offline.
