New YouTube Update finally brings Promised Support for Mobile Live-Streaming, but it isn’t yet Active

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A little over a week ago, the YouTube creator blog announced that content creators who have enabled the ability to live stream on their accounts would soon be able to run a stream straight from their mobile device. Initially, Google announced that only 5 of their YouTube partners would be able to use the feature. But now it appears that the promised support for livestreaming will indeed be rolling out soon to more users, if the latest YouTube 11.25.55 APK is any indication.

Source: YouTube Creator Blog

We’ll Do it Live! … Finally!

Our source for the imminent roll-out are strings within the latest YouTube APK indicating support for the feature.

<string name="gallery_go_live_button_description">Go live button</string>

<string name="gallery_go_live_button_text">Go live</string>

…

<string name=”live_upcoming_datetime”>Live on %1$s</string>

While these strings would not constitute concrete evidence when tearing down other Google apps, we already know that Google will soon be offering this feature due to their official announcement. We can’t give an exact date on when the feature will actually be rolled out to all users, though, as the switch seems to be on the server-side. We could not find the actual button to begin a live stream anywhere within the latest YouTube APK on any of our test devices. Nevertheless, we do know what the button will look like when it does start showing up for all users, as indicated in the gallery_fragment.xml file inside the APK’s asset layout.

<com.google.android.libraries.youtube.common.ui.YouTubeTextView android:textSize="@dimen/gallery_camera_buttons_font_size" android:textColor="@color/gallery_camera_buttons_font_color" android:gravity="center" android:layout_gravity="center" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="@string/gallery_go_live_button_text" android:drawableTop="@drawable/ic_broadcast" android:contentDescription="@null" android:textAllCaps="true" res-auto:robotoFont="medium" xmlns:res-auto="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto" />

Miscellaneous Features Found in the Teardown

Disclaimer: The evidence we dig up from the APK files of an app are not definitive. Google may choose to pull these features without any indication in a future release.

Besides the principle “go live” feature that we all knew was eventually coming to Youtube, there are a few additional features that may be coming in the near future according to some additional strings we found within the latest YouTube update. First up, we’re seeing some evidence that YouTube will allow you to retry saving offline videos that failed to save the first time you attempted to offload the content. This will likely be useful mostly to users who like to save large amounts of content for when they travel, only to see that something went wrong when they tried to save certain videos or playlists.

<string name="offline_retry_failed_videos_dialog_message">Retry saving all failed videos in this list?</string>

<string name="offline_retry_failed_videos_menu_item">Retry saving failed videos</string>

Finally, we’re seeing evidence that YouTube will soon provide additional playback options for videos. Currently, the only options available to users are Previous/Next, Play/Pause, and Close.

Soon, we may be seeing the ability to Stop and Retry playback of a video. More playback options are always welcome to satisfy everyone’s use cases, although the current offerings are more than enough for the majority of people.

<string name="playback_control_retry">Retry</string>

<string name="playback_control_stop">Stop</string>

That’s all we’ve found within the latest YouTube app update. Let us know your thoughts below!