Aside from background playback — the ability to turn off the screen and continue listening to content — the main drawback to YouTube on mobile is its inability to play clips without a network connection.
On the official YouTube Partners and Creators Blog, Google posted that later this year it will scratch at least one of those itches, allowing “people to add videos to their device to watch for a short period when an Internet connection is unavailable.”
This may seem like a minor update, but offline caching is becoming an integral part of the mobile experience, especially for those users who have limited bandwidth who want to preload music videos and other clips over WiFi before leaving on a morning commute.
No word on whether background playback will be added at a future date, but we’re pretty excited for this development.
[source]YouTube Creators Blog[/source]
