YouTube Is Rolling Out a Bunch of New (and Free) Features

Sometimes it pays to be a paid subscriber, as when YouTube releases a batch of new features for those who subscribe to Premium—leaving out those of us who use the platform for free. But today, we're all benefitting: The company's latest roundup of new features and changes applies to all YouTube users, both free and Premium, including one feature that was previous available exclusively to paid subscribers.

Here's what's new:

YouTube finally has a usable in-app Miniplayer

If you’ve ever tried browsing the YouTube app while a video is playing, you’ve noticed your video player minimizes to the bottom of the page, and shrinks down to a tiny thumbnail preview. This is convenient for quickly returning to the video itself, but the thumbnail is so small, it’s essentially useless if you’re trying to watch the video at the same time you’re scrolling through other content. The thumbnail might as well not be there.

That’s now changing. As part of this new batch of features, YouTube is rolling out a Miniplayer that’s much more reminiscent of the player you’d expect to see in picture-in-picture mode (PiP). When you leave a video to continue browsing the YouTube app, the Miniplayer appears, and is large enough to actually keep up with what’s going on in…