Rejoice android users, now you can officially go offline and watch YouTube videos

Friday December 12, 2014 , 2 min Read

Indians watch about 5 billion videos per month. And now the Android junta can watch it offline as well.

Early in September at Android One event in Delhi, YouTube promised to launch an offline access to video contents on mobile. Today the YouTube team made the announcement at a Mumbai event.

How do you scale online video to 300million users despite bandwidth and affordability challenges? Take #Youtube offline! @YouTubeIndia— Rajan Anandan (@RajanAnandan) December 11, 2014

The new offline feature is available in select countries - India, Indonesia, and Philippines. Now users can take videos offline and watch it while traveling on a train or commuting on a city bus. People can choose to add a video for offline viewing by tapping on the offline icon that sits under the video frame. This feature release is a big win for the users who want to save on their mobile data bills.

Yes, mobile is eating the world. But when it comes to mobile internet, data is eating into the pockets of people in emerging and developing markets. Even as mobile phones have become the primary entertainment consumption device, access to constant Internet remains a big problem. Especially playing videos drains the Internet balance fast. Now YouTube has come up with a cure.

The official Google statement on the blog stated.

“Once taken offline, videos can be played back without an Internet connection for 48 hours, allowing people to enjoy YouTube videos without worrying about slow connections.

Starting today, much of the popular YouTube content in India is already available for people to view offline, including video content from some of India’s household names for entertainment and music, including T-Series, Saregama and Yashraj Films. Making these popular videos available for offline playback will help people move past the challenges of data connection, speed and cost to enjoy a smooth, buffer-free version of their favorite content.”

This is an initiative that Google was trying to implement since 2009. Generally YouTube does not allow downloading of videos. Of course, there are unofficial third-party plug-ins for that, some of them have received a cease and desist letter and shut down.

Here are the top 25 most watched and subscribed Indian channels on YouTube.