YouTube has made it a whole lot easier to sign in on your TV
YouTube on TV is a great way to consume content but it’s far from being as convenient as its mobile or web counterparts. Fortunately, Google has been making notes on this and with the new year, it’s rounding up a bunch of new features and time-saving tweaks it hasimplementedin the last few months. Most important of them all? Well, you no longer need to type your account and password using the horrible on-screen keyboard on your TV.
If your phone and the TV are connected to the same WiFi network, you can continue the sign-in process by opening the YouTube app on your phone. This works even with iPhones and makes the sign-in process a lot easier. I’m bummed that it took so long for Google to figure this out but well, better late than never. Previously, you could alreadyuse a web browser to sign in, but doing so right in the YouTube app is even more convenient.
The new sign-in process on an iPhone.
Another small but nice tweak is that the quality selector now dynamically shows the quality the video is playing in (SD, HD, 4K, or 8K). This will save you the additional step of opening the selector to check if it’s playing at the quality you want. Google also says that casting from your phone now offers the same full experience that you would get if you started a video from your TV’s YouTube app itself.
The captions menu also got updated to provide what Google calls the “best experience” possible. Since I haven’t played with this setting previously, I’m not sure what’s changed. However, it now allows you to tweak a range of settings, from font and font size to the background and window color, all without leaving the video playing.
Lastly, Google has also bundled an updated version of its browser engine which enables background music playback and improves network loss recovery.
Google has already implemented all the aforementioned features and tweaks so you should be able to use them on the YouTube app on your TV right now.
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