YouTube Premium’s Enhanced 1080p Bitrate is Now Available on Android, Web and Smart TVs

YouTube Premium’s enhanced 1080p bitrate quality is no longer exclusive to iOS. Google announced yesterday that the feature is now available on the web, Android devices, and YouTube apps on smart TVs, and it will be enabled by default if you have enough bandwidth.

Google first introduced this enhanced bitrate version of 1080p video quality as an experimental feature on iOS in February. The feature rolled out to all YouTube Premium subscribers on iOS in April, and Google said that it provides a better viewing experience by providing more information per pixel.

This new “1080p Premium” quality on all platforms isn’t the only new Premium feature Google announced yesterday: This is something I wasn’t aware of, but YouTube Premium users can now start watching a video on a device and pick up where they left off on another one. This is similar to how Spotify Connect works, and this experience is now available across phones, tablets, computers, and smart TVs.

This is a bit more trivial, but YouTube is also introducing achievement badges for Premium members. The YouTube team said that the achievements are all about “highlighting your Premium milestones and how you’ve embraced all those exclusive features.”

Lastly, if you’re a YouTube Premium subscriber, you can now try two new experimental generative AI features: A new conversational AI tool that can answer questions about the video you’re watching, and comment topics summarized by AI.