YouTube Premium has been available since 2018 as it provides users with an ad-free user experience. It doesn’t look like it is enough to make some people go for a premium plan therefore, YouTube might be planning to make a free tool exclusive to premium members only in the nearest future. A Redditor u/Ihatesmokealarms shared a screenshot about this change but there’s no word from the company about this.
The screenshot shows that users must upgrade to a Premium plan before they can apply 2160p to their current video. Non-premium YouTube users can currently watch content in 4K resolution with ads in between. Non-premium users’ video playback resolution is likely to be limited soon.
With an increasing number of people purchasing 4K smart TVs these days, the Alphabet-owned company may be attempting to convert these users into YouTube prime subscribers. Aside from no advertisements, the premium plan enables users to download videos, watch videos with the picture-in-picture feature, and listen to millions of songs on YouTube Music.
