A test is underway until October 19, via YouTube Premium.
An offline mode, to download videos in order to watch them later, is very useful on mobile: you don’t always have a network where you are. Anyone who’s ever gone to the depths of the countryside on vacation, or has ever walked the bowels of the Paris metro, knows that the connection can be anemic. This is why YouTube has imagined an offline mode with its mobile application.
The interest of declining this offline mode on PC is however less obvious. Some would say that this would make it possible to have videos in advance if the Internet box ever shows signs of fatigue. Except you never know when an incident occurs. And when this one arrives, it is too late to recover videos. When everything is restored, the offline world is no longer useful.
A test until October 19
YouTube may also be trying to figure out what this could be used for. Android Police has learned of the existence of a test until October 19 to download videos from certain browsers. Supported are Chrome, Edge and Opera with the latest version available. The test is reserved for Internet users who have a YouTube Premium account – that is to say paid.
It should be noted that this is not a classic download button, with a video in .MP4 or .WEBM format which would be placed in your download folder. Depending on the feedback available, the uploaded videos can be accessed via a menu on the YouTube site. Obviously, it is not possible to watch these videos outside of one of the eligible browsers.
Therefore, the attractiveness of this option is low. What would have been needed is a real download button, accessible to everyone, and allowing to retrieve a copy of the video of their choice. But for reasons certainly related to copyright, the YouTube interface does not provide for anything like this… which pushes Internet users to go to dedicated sites.
