YouTube's experimental Lock Screen feature could eliminate accidental pauses

YouTube is currently experimenting with a new feature designed to address a common issue: accidental taps. The appropriately called Lock Screen feature eliminates those by disabling touch input while you are watching a full-screen video. This feature is currently in testing and is only available to selected Premium subscribers.

The new Lock Screen feature, which is being tested until the end of July, was first spotted by Cord Cutter News (via TechCrunch). It is accessible to Premium YouTube users on Android and iOS who have received an invitation to participate.

If you happen to be a Premium subscriber and have been granted access to the experiment, you can give it a try by navigating to the gear icon while in full-screen mode and selecting Lock Screen. This feature allows you to watch videos without the risk of accidentally tapping the screen and pausing or disrupting playback.

This new feature might be quite useful, as watching videos on smartphones or tablets can sometimes be frustrating due to accidental taps that pause the playback, which also happens quite often when, for example, a child uses the device to watch cartoons.

YouTube is making efforts to encourage more users to subscribe to its Premium plans by introducing exclusive features for paid subscribers or imposing certain restrictions on free users. For example, users with ad blockers installed are limited to watching only three videos.

Despite having over 2 billion monthly users on the platform, YouTube's Premium subscriber base currently stands at 80 million. With these new updates targeting paid subscribers, YouTube's parent company, Google, aims to entice more free users to embrace the benefits of paid subscriptions.

Considering that ads are already a significant part of the platform, it would be no surprise that YouTube can achieve this goal and convert even the most dedicated free users into paid subscribers.