YouTube Red is a great service if you want to get rid of those pesky ads, but there’s one group of people that hasn’t been able to enjoy YouTube ad-free: kids. Well, that’s finally changing.
YouTube Kids — a video service from YouTube aimed at allowing parents to let their kids watch videos without stumbling across anything inappropriate for their age — is finally integrating with YouTube Red. Basically, kids can now watch videos without ads, as long as their parents pay for it.
Of course, YouTube Red isn’t just great for watching videos without ads — it also lets you download videos for offline use. In other words, if you’re heading on a long car drive, you can now download a few videos for the kids to watch on the way. Last but not least is the ability to use YouTube in background mode — in other words, you can now start up those kids tunes and play them in the background while still using Google Maps to get where you need to be.
To get started with both services, all you’ll need to do is download the YouTube Kids app and make sure you have a YouTube Red membership. You can then sign in to that membership from the parental controls section of the YouTube Kids app, and follow the on-screen instructions.
Google hasn’t released any numbers about YouTube Red, but has said that YouTube Kids has already served up more than 10 billion video views. Not only that, but a report from The Verge mentions that YouTube Red subscriptions make up around 4 to 5 percent of the income being made by YouTube content creators.
According to Google, more changes to YouTube Kids are on the way, such as a few changes that will help parents better customize the content that their kids watch. The new integration is currently available in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand.
