Youtube is perhaps the most visited website by the old and new generations alike. And with Youtube app in your smartphone, you can easily waste away hours watching those addicting videos made by millions of people all over the world. I myself have done away with whole afternoons watching some of the very funny prank videos or those thought provoking documentaries. But Youtube is also heavy on your internet bandwidth – watching videos in HD quality puts extra load on your internet connection (WiFi or data packs).
If you live in some of the developing countries where internet is either unusually expensive or frustratingly slow compared to some of the developed countries, then Google’s new app YouTube Go is for you. This app can be said to be a lightweight version of the regular YouTube app and works only on Android devices.
As you launch the app for the first time, it asks you to pick a language. Apart from English, all the languages displayed in the list are from the Indian sub-continent so I guess this app targets that geographic region. After this you can use this app just like the regular YouTube app – search for videos and watch them.
But this app focuses on saving the videos locally on your phone and sharing them with your friends through the WiFi network (not internet). If you choose to watch a video, it gives you options to Save it or Play it. It also shows you the various available video qualities in which you can save the video files on your phone.
After saving the video, you can access it from the Save section in the YouTube Go. From here you can watch the video, send it to your friends who are nearby you using an ad-hoc WiFi network that connects your phone to your friends’. You can also receive videos saved by your friends in a similar manner.
By allowing people to save the videos and then send or receive it locally over local networks saves all the internet bandwidth that you would have otherwise wasted in watching the same videos that your friends already have downloaded.
You can get the YouTube Go app from http://youtubego.com/.