If you are an Android user, YouTube must be one of your favorite applications. YouTube experience in Tablet or a Smartphone is way better than in computer. But YouTube is a bandwidth intensive application. If you want to stream a video with no interruption you need high speed as well as reliable broadband service.
When you are at home, you may have high speed, highly reliable fiber optic and Wi-fi router. But when you are on the move it’s not the case. Mobile broadband services are fast but not really reliable. If you try to stream YouTube video on the move most of the time you won’t be able to enjoy uninterrupted video streaming.
Best thing you can do for this is download YouTube videos when you are home and store them in your phone. This is not allowed and even if you come up with a workaround still it’s illegal. But Android YouTube app has come up with similar and smarter solution for this problem.
How Preload Video Feature Works?
After you enable preload video feature in YouTube android app, it will automatically cache videos if you are in a Wi-fi zone and charging. This could be your home or may be public hot spot, everything happens in background. When you are away from a Wi-fi zone you can watch preloaded videos. YouTube app is not preloading videos using mobile data connection. It’s only using Wi-fi.
How to Enable Preloading Videos?
- Make sure you have latest YouTube app in your Android device.
- Open the YouTube app and then go to Settings -> Preloading
- There you can select what are the videos to be preloaded.
- Given options are Subscriptions and Watch later list. Check them as appropriate.
- Preloaded videos will be indicated with down arrow in a circle.
- Now whenever you are in a Wi-fi zone and charging your phone, YouTube app will preload above selected videos. So you can enjoy them later with no interruption.
The best configuration you can come up with is preload watch later list. Then all you have to do is add videos to watch later list and they will be preloaded. If you select subscriptions to be preloaded make sure you have only few subscriptions or it will consume massive amount of bandwidth.
Always remember, preloading video is not a solution for you to watch video when you have no data connection at all. In that case YouTube app won’t even start properly.
It’s a great idea to preload videos in home wi-fi and watch them on the move without wasting mobile data cap. I have tested this on Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean. It worked just fine. You may try this, may be in a different device with another version of Android and share your experience as a comment below.
Tags: #Android #YouTube