YouTube rolling out new miniplayer, fine-tunable playback speed, sleep timer, and more 

YouTube is making official a number of updates that it’s been testing in recent months, like the new miniplayer and several design updates.

The YouTube app on Android and iOS is getting a new miniplayer. Instead of a second bar above the bottom bar with a tight rectangular crop, play/pause, and an x, it now looks like a picture-in-picture window.

The video appears above with a close button in the corner, while a strip below gives you play/pause and 10-second rewind/forward. Notably, you can move the in-app miniplayer and resize it to be larger. 

In the player > settings gear menu, all (free and Premium) users will get access to a new Sleep Timer. The increments are: 10, 15, 20, 30, 45 minutes, 1 hour, and end of video.

There’s also fine-tunable playback speed with a new UI on mobile. Instead of the list of increments ranging from 0.25x to 2x, you get a slider that allows for 0.05x increments. There are also plus/minus buttons and some presets at the bottom. 

There are a handful of playlist updates, like the ability to create custom thumbnails using your own images or with AI. The latter is also available in YouTube Music, and will now be available on the web for the main site. 

Similarly, collaborative playlists are coming to main YouTube via link or QR code on TVs (coming soon). Later this year, you will be able to vote on videos in playlists to rank them. 

YouTube is making official badges that “celebrate unique-to-YouTube milestones, such as being one of the first set of paid members of a creator’s channel, or correctly completing quizzes.” In YouTube Music, you earn them for “being a top listener of their favorite artist or having a creator heart your comment.” Look out for “Badges” in the You tab over the “next several weeks.”