YouTube Premium subscribers just got 5 handy new tricks – but I'm still waiting for this one feature

A YouTube Premium promo on a laptop screen

(Image credit: Google / Future)

New experimental features are available for YouTube Premium users
They include the option to increase playback speed to 4x
The platform is still missing an incognito mode for the web

Paying $13.99 / £11.99 / AU$14.99 per month for YouTube Premium gets rid of all the adverts on the site, but it also comes with a range of other perks – and YouTube just added five new experimental features for Premium users to test out.

Perhaps the most interesting of the bunch, as spotted by The Verge, is the ability to watch videos at 4x speed on Android and iOS rather than the regular 2x maximum. It means you can get through twice as many videos in the same time – if you can bear the rapid pace.

That's not all: you can also get smart downloads and picture-in-picture for YouTube Shorts on iOS, high quality audio (256kbps) on Android and iOS, and jump ahead (skip to the most popular parts of a video) on the web.

If you're a YouTube Premium subscriber, head over to the YouTube experimental pageto give these new tricks a whirl. They're only available for a limited time though, up until February 5-26 depending on the feature.

Going incognito

YouTube in incognito mode — Incognito mode is only available on mobile (Image credit: Future)

I've written before about YouTube Premium being my favorite digital subscription, and being able to test out new features like these is just one of many reasons why. You also get access to YouTube Music Premium, and downloads across all of your devices.

Then of course: no ads. It's hard to overstate the time you can save and the inconvenience you can avoid with an ad-free YouTube, and if you spend a substantial amount of time on the platform it really does transform the experience.

There's one outstanding feature I'd still love YouTube Premium to add: an incognito mode for the web so I can queue up lots of lo-fi music mixes for work, and go down deep dives on topics, without then having my recommendations skewed significantly in that direction.

Even more frustratingly, the feature is available on Android and iOS, so YouTube clearly knows how to do this – but I do most of my watching on the web or on a TV screen. Add incognito mode on the web, and then YouTube Premium really will be perfect.

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Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.