YouTube to bring offline viewing to mobile apps

This is great news for anyone who’s a YouTube fiend but doesn’t have internet access at home. The video-sharing network has announced that it’ll be adding the ability to watch videos offline to its mobile apps.

Given that Google’s actively gone after Microsoft for giving people the ability to download videos with its YouTube app, it should hardly be surprising that you’ll only be able to watch videos using the features for a “short time”.

In a blog post aimed at video creators, YouTube says that this means “your fans’ ability to enjoy your videos no longer has to be interrupted by something as commonplace as a morning commute”.

The video network adds that the feature is designed “to give people more opportunities to enjoy videos and channels on YouTube mobile”.

At this stage, YouTube hasn’t revealed exactly how the feature will work, although it obviously won’t be starting from scratch. As The Verge notes, the company last year began implementing pre-downloading of videos for its Android app. That particular feature required you to start watching a video online before allowing you to move offline.

It’s also worth noting, as The Next Web does, that unveiling the feature on its Creator blog could mean that the people uploading the videos could have ultimate control over whether a video can be viewed offline or not.

According to YouTube, you should be able to start watching videos offline by some time in November.