YouTube now lets some Premium users share ad-free videos with friends

While YouTube is undoubtedly one of the best free video streaming platforms, it’s no secret that the company consistently pushes users toward upgrading to YouTube Premium. We recently spotted a new page in YouTube’s help section that reinforces this agenda.

YouTube Premium users can now share up to 10 ad-free videos each month with non-premium users, giving them a taste of the ad-free experience they’re missing by not subscribing, as long as the other person lives in a region where YouTube Premium is available.

Once someone clicks the shared link, they can watch the entire video without a single ad disrupting their viewing experience. Nearly all videos on YouTube can be shared as part of a premium subscriber’s 10 ad-free shares, except for music content, YouTube Originals, Shorts, Livestreams, and Movies & Shows.

Only a small percentage of YouTube Premium members can currently try this

At the time of writing, this is still an experimental feature being tested with a limited number of YouTube Premium subscribers in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

If you’re a Premium subscriber in one of these regions, you can check if you have access by tapping the Share button on a video’s watch page, selecting Share ad-free, and then either choosing an app to share the link or tapping Copy link. Here, you’ll also be able to see how many ad-free shares you have remaining.

The cool part is that the ad-free video you share won’t expire once the person you’ve shared it with watches it. Each video you share can be watched without ads a total of 10 times. It also doesn’t matter if you share the video with multiple people, as those 10 ad-free views are shared across all recipients.

But don’t worry, it still only counts as one of your 10 ad-free shares for the month. It also won’t count toward the 10 ad-free views per link if you accidentally share a unique link with someone who is already a YouTube Premium subscriber.

Unless the video has been watched 10 times, your friends can enjoy it ad-free for up to 30 days from when the unique link was created. After that, the video can still be watched with ads again. If the video has expired, users trying to watch it might encounter a “Something went wrong” error.

Non-Premium users can only watch ad-free videos if they’re signed in to their YouTube account. So, if you’ve received an ad-free video, just tap the link and make sure you’re logged in to the YouTube app on your Android or iOS device.

While this feature is currently limited to a small percentage of YouTube Premium members, the support page mentions that it might be expanded to more users in the future. All in all, it’s a fun way for Premium users to flex their ad-free experience.

Plus, if you’re not a Premium user, you now have the option to hit up your Premium friend to share some ad-free videos with you, which is pretty neat. The platform is also currently testing adding video recommendations directly to the playback queue for Premium users.