If you have a tablet, there’s a good chance that you’ll spend a lot of your time watching videos and content, and it’s likely that a lot of that takes place on YouTube. If your device happens to be Android-powered, then there’s good news today as YouTube has updated its app for Android tablets, bringing the raft of changes that were made last week to its iOS apps over to the Google-owned operating system.
Now owners of Android tablets will enjoy the same revamped user interface and new cross-site ‘Guide’ feature, which promotes subscriptions and channels, helping users discover new content and recover their favorites easily.
Changes have also been made to the tablet-version of the mobile site — m.youtube.com — which YouTube says remains popular with device users. The move will see the new changes appear consistently across both iOS and Android tablets, which is obviously important when you’re talking about the Web’s biggest video site.
The reason behind YouTube’s redesign are straight forward, it is continuing to position the site as a destination for entertainment and content, rather than just the Web’s central repository for videos. Therefore being easily navigable and user friendly on tablets (its iOS app recently got full iPad support) is an absolute must.
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YouTube has been busy building up more original content as part of its Channels program, which recently expanded to Asia when it launched in Japan. Bearing in mind the money it is ploughing into the initiative — which has just begun its second year of upfront ad payments to content partners — a redesign to promote channels and subscriptions is on track with this initiative.
The expanded changes come after the firm revealed that there are over 4 billion hours of video watched on YouTube alone each month. Within the last year, the number of users subscribing to channels has doubled, and the company is estimating that an additional 30 percent rise is to be expected. That makes managing subscriptions crucial on the service.
The changes for Android were announced on the YouTube Google+ account:
YouTube looks awesome on tablets, so today we’ve updated our YouTube app for Android tablets, as well as our mobile website for tablets (m.youtube.com).
In the Android app on a tablet, you’ll see a refreshed YouTube experience including a Guide that provides easy access to your favorite channels and ways to discover new ones.
While we’ve recently launched the YouTube app for iPad, we know many of you enjoy using the mobile website (m.youtube.com). Today, that site is refreshed for the tablet experience too, featuring the same Guide with your subscriptions and easier controls for sending videos from your tablet to your TV.
– Waldemar Baraldi and Dan Delima, software engineers
You can grab the update on the Google Play store at the link below.
Top image via zallio / Flickr, screenshot via YouTube
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