5 YouTube Features That Can Improve Your Smart TV Experience

Having a smart TV is great for a number of reasons, including the underrated features you need to start using, but one aspect that allows a device to shine is the ability to customize certain settings to best suit your needs, both on the device itself and the apps you use. YouTube is surely one of the most popular apps you’ll interact with on a smart TV, but you might not know that there are plenty of ways to customize Google’s video platform on your device to make the most of the seemingly endless supply of content. From parental controls to artificial intelligence, we look at some YouTube features that can be a big help on your smart TV.

In addition to explaining what each feature does for your experience, we’ll also show you how to enable or use it correctly. Most of them are fortunately quite simple. Naturally, for those who own a new smart TV, there are a few things you should do right out of the box. However, even if you’ve had your device for a while, many of the YouTube features below may still impact how you use the Google service. Since not all smart TVs are the same, you may want to do some additional research on some of these settings on your particular device, but keep reading to learn how you can better take advantage of the YouTube app with these useful features.

While there’s a smart TV for every budget, you undoubtedly want your content to look its best, even if you’re just watching a few videos on YouTube. For the app, several factors can determine the quality of a video on your smart TV, including the resolution in which the uploaded video was filmed. The size of your TV screen can also impact video quality, as can the speed of your Internet connection.

Even with these potential limitations, there is a setting in the YouTube app that allows you to force it to always display videos at a certain resolution and it’s not too difficult to find. However, changing this setting may affect other things related to your TV, such as your Internet connection.

Nonetheless, here are the steps to change your default video quality:

1. While watching a video on your smart TV, press your selection button.

2. Choose Settings.

3. Select Quality.

4. Choose your preferred option from the list.

From there, you’re good to go, but remember that constantly streaming higher quality videos can impact your internet usage, and you should definitely keep this in mind if you have a data cap on your internet plan. If you want to go into detail, keep in mind that you want around 5 Mbps for HD streaming and between 15 and 25 Mbps for 4K streaming. It’s a simple feature, but it can be useful.

Using the on-screen keyboard to search YouTube can be quite slow if you only have a remote, and even with search predictions you can take more direct action on a smart TV. If you want to save time and go straight to what you’re looking for, take advantage of the voice search option, which lets you speak your search query rather than typing it all one letter at a time.

This one is also pretty easy to get started. If you have a microphone button on your smart TV remote, hold the button when the YouTube app is open and say your search. You will find the search icon in the left column of the application. Voice search can be useful when you’re trying to find something specific, but you can also do general search queries like “fast food reviews” to get an assortment of content to check out.

When searching for content on YouTube, remember that Google ranks search results based on three criteria: the relevance of the video, how much the audience interacts with it, and the overall quality of the video. And just like you can delete your YouTube viewing history, you can also delete your search history by clicking the Settings icon, selecting Manage all history, and then choosing the queries you want to delete.

Depending on what you watch on YouTube, you might be curious to know more about a specific video or program. Whatever information you’re looking for, YouTube is likely able to find it with its conversational AI tool, which can be very helpful while you’re streaming. In addition to being able to provide a summary of the video, conversational AI can help provide information, such as telling you what ingredients are needed when watching a cooking video.

There are two ways to start a conversation. If your remote has a microphone button, simply press or hold it to start asking Gemini questions. Another way is to press the up or down buttons on your remote while watching a YouTube video, which brings up the details of the video. Tap the Gemini button (which looks like a star) and YouTube will give you a number of suggested prompts.

Google has leaned heavily into the idea of ​​AI helping you in more conversational ways, including bringing a smart home update, which is a big deal. For your smart TV, however, this feature has some caveats. First, you must be signed in to YouTube and meet the minimum age requirement by Google in your region. This feature does not work with the YouTube Kids app or supervised child accounts. Still, it can be fun to try if you’re looking for more information from a video.

Like other apps and services these days, YouTube wants to keep you on the platform for as long as possible. One example of this is how it uses algorithms to tailor an experience that feels personal to you, but another way is to have videos automatically play one after another. Once you finish a video on YouTube, the platform prepares the next one for you. This can be fine if you just want to focus on whatever, but there’s no real control over what plays next.

Since autoplay will continue to run for 30 minutes if you’re on mobile and four hours on Wi-Fi, knowing how to turn it off can be very handy, especially if you have a data plan. You can change your autoplay options on specific devices, so you can turn them off on one device while keeping them on another.

Here are the steps to change your autoplay settings:

1. Access the YouTube app on your smart TV.

2. Choose Settings.

3. Scroll down and select Autoplay.

4. Choose to keep it enabled or disabled.

Surprisingly, autoplay isn’t necessarily always automatically enabled on all accounts. For users aged 13 to 17, the setting is disabled by default. Users of a supervised account may not have the autoplay feature at all, depending on whether the account guardian has already turned it off.

And when it comes to YouTube accounts for kids, Google has a child safety policy for YouTube that prevents users from posting certain content that could harm minors, and there’s also an additional feature that can help parents moderate what a child watches. Fortunately, YouTube offers a parent code option, which prevents children from accessing accounts that are not intended for children and prevents anyone from accessing content without being logged into an account. It’s a small detail, but it can be handy for restricting access to content. Essentially, you create a four-digit code that will need to be entered when accessing YouTube.

Here are the steps to activate a parent code:

1. Open the YouTube app.

2. Choose Settings.

3. Select Parent Code.

4. Follow the on-screen prompts.

Turning it off involves the same steps, but you’ll need to enter the four-digit code. However, once the setting is enabled, you will need this code to remove YouTube accounts from the smart TV, as well as to access adult accounts or watch things when you are logged out.