These days, I use YouTube for a lot more than just watching videos. More often than not, it’s playing music or podcasts in the background while I work.

But one feature I’ve come to rely on heavily to do that is playback speed, which lets you speed up or slow down whatever you’re watching. I have a habit of bumping podcasts up a notch, especially when they’re on the slower side. Nothing extreme, but setting them to 1.25x or 1.5x speed can make a big difference when I’m short on time.

That’s why, to me, playback speed has always felt like one of those small but essential features YouTube offers for free. But, unfortunately, that might not be the case for much longer.

Recently, it’s been spotted that YouTube is experimenting with the idea of locking its popular playback speed feature behind YouTube Premium (via Android Authority).

In other words, adjusting video speeds could soon become a paid feature. Reports of this first surfaced after a user posted on Reddit about suddenly losing access to playback speed on YouTube for free altogether, and was greeted with a pop-up that read, “Watch in faster playback speeds with Premium,” with Google now positioning playback speed as a paid YouTube Premium perk.

notable shows

Kitchen Nightmares, Merlin

notable movies

Clueless, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, How to Train Your Dragon, Mean Girls, Star Trek

Premium Subscription

Yes, $13.99 per month

Originals

No

Playback being locked behind Premium isn’t set in stone

This appears to be a limited test

Based on the Reddit post and reporting from Android Authority, it appears YouTube is currently running a test that separates the ability to adjust playback speed into two groups of users.

Group A, which is the majority, still has free access to playback speed, while Group B has it locked behind a YouTube Premium paywall. The Redditor claims they first learned about this test when one of their accounts was locked out of using playback speed unless they paid for Premium, while another Google account they have is still able to access playback speed for free.

For what it’s worth, I tested this myself on two different Google accounts that don’t have YouTube Premium, and I was still able to use playback speed for free on both, in both the browser and in the app. However, it’s possible that Google is running this test only in certain regions and countries, and the test may also be extremely limited, so it may not affect many people to begin with.

But what this test does mean is that Google is seriously considering locking playback speed behind YouTube Premium, and regardless of the outcome of this test, it’s possible Google could go ahead with it no matter what to make Premium more enticing to those who have always been on the fence about it.

Currently, YouTube offers two versions of YouTube Premium: Premium, which costs $14 a month, and PremiumLite, for $8 a month. Premium-lite just offers ad-free videos, while full Premium offers ad-free videos on top of a whole bunch of other perks, like YouTube Music, background play on mobile, offline downloads, and continue watching. So, given Premium Lite’s very limited feature set, and with the Reddit post showing Premium with Playback speed listed at $13.99 a month, it seems to me that if YouTube goes ahead with this, it would be locked behind full YouTube Premium.

Personally, I hope YouTube doesn’t go through with this, as it feels like a needless money grab for a feature that has been free to use since its inception and is more likely to anger people than entice them to pay for Premium. Again, this is just a test by the looks of it, so it’s always possible Google doesn’t go ahead with this at all, which would be the best-case scenario.