Surprise! Offline YouTube videos don't vanish after 48 hours
When Google announced support for offline viewing of YouTube videos on Thursday, it also said that the videos would be only available for 48 hours.
This is what a Google spokesperson wrote on the company's official blog:
Today we're releasing a new offline feature within the YouTube app, in India, Indonesia and the Philippines. This feature lets you take videos offline to watch later during short periods of low or no internet connectivity. For videos where this feature is available, you can choose to add the video for offline viewing by tapping on the offline icon. Once taken offline, videos can be played back without an Internet connection for up to 48 hours, so you can enjoy YouTube videos without worrying about slow connections.
We have tried the feature on Android devices and it works very well. But we are intrigued by the 48-hours window. The videos are actually downloaded on a device for offline viewing so we are not sure how Google plans to enforce the 48-hour rule.
Interestingly, for now we are seeing that the rule is not enforced. The videos we downloaded on Thursday were still available for offline viewing on Monday. And the files that Google downloaded from YouTube to make these videos available in offline mode were also available on the device.
So what is going on? Here is a simple explanation.
When Google says that offline videos will be available only for 48 hours, it means that the videos will become inaccessible if the device is not connected to the internet for 48 hours. But if you connect the device to internet even once during the 48-hour window, the YouTube app will be able to verify the status and will refresh the 48-hour deadline. This means if you keep connecting your Android device to internet from time-to-time, the offline videos will remain accessible and you won't have to download them again.
Comments
Post a Comment