Skip to main content

YouTube begins rolling out live-streaming via app, starting with creators

YouTube Live
Image used with permission by copyright holder
YouTube has featured live-streaming on its desktop site since 2011, but the company is finally ready to take on Facebook Live by bringing the feature to smartphones.

You won’t be able to broadcast to the world yet, though — the feature is going live for YouTube creators with more than 10,000 subscribers first. It will roll out to everyone “soon.” YouTube announced the feature was heading to mobile last summer at VidCon.

The good news is that you don’t need to download a separate app to go live — it’s built right into the YouTube app. The Live button will sit at the top of the app, and once you tap it you can write a title, take a picture for the thumbnail, and start streaming.

“Streamed videos will have all the same features as regular YouTube videos,” the company writes in a blog post. “They can be searched for, found via recommendations or playlists, and protected from unauthorized use. Our mobile live-streaming uses YouTube’s rock-solid infrastructure, meaning it’ll be fast and reliable, just the YouTube you know and love.”

YouTube says it worked with creators to refine the experience — for example, live chat is slowed down when a stream is getting a high number of messages in a short span of time. There’s also Super Chat, which allows viewers to pin highlighted messages briefly to get the streamer’s attention for up to five hours — this is a paid feature, and the more you pay the longer your message stays at the top of the chat.

The live-stream’s user interface isn’t too different from Periscope, but the feature finally puts Google and YouTube toe-to-toe with Facebook and Twitter. Again, it’s only rolling out to creators right now but we’ll keep you updated when there’s a wider release.

Editors' Recommendations

Julian Chokkattu
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Julian is the mobile and wearables editor at Digital Trends, covering smartphones, fitness trackers, smartwatches, and more…
YouTube is rolling out handles. Here’s what you need to know
The red and white YouTube logo on a phone screen. The phone is on a white background.

YouTube recently announced that it would be rolling out handles for YouTube channels. Whether you've just heard about them or you already got an email from YouTube saying it's time to choose one, you're probably wondering what they are and how they're different from YouTube channel names.

In this guide, we'll go over what a YouTube handle is and answer a few questions about them so you can better understand what they are and be better prepared to choose one when it's rolled out to you.

Read more
YouTube brings pinch to zoom and video navigation changes to everyone
The red and white YouTube logo on a phone screen. The phone is on a white background.

YouTube is updating its user interface with a slew of changes, and chief among them are the pinch-to-zoom feature and "precise" video navigation.

On Monday, YouTube announced quite a few updates to its viewing experience on mobile and web. Notably, the video-sharing platform said that it was finally "launching pinch to zoom and precise seeking to all users starting today."

Read more
YouTube to overhaul channel names with @ handles for all
Youtube video on mobile. Credits: YouTube official.

YouTube is launching “handles” to make it easier for viewers to find and engage with creators on the video-sharing platform.

The change means that soon, every channel will have a unique handle denoted by an "@" mark, "making it easier for fans to discover content and interact with creators they love," the Google-owned company said in a post announcing the change.

Read more