YouTube’s Android app for offline viewing in emerging markets, announced in 2016, was YouTube Go.
Google announced YouTube Go in September 2016 as a separate, data-conscious Android app aimed at users dealing with expensive mobile data, unreliable connectivity, and entry-level smartphones. It was developed with emerging-market conditions in mind, especially after research with users in India highlighted the difficulty of previewing and saving videos economically.
The app let users preview a video before playing it, choose a download quality, save videos for offline viewing, and share downloaded videos with nearby users over Bluetooth. These controls were intended to make data consumption more predictable than in the standard YouTube app.
YouTube Go first launched in India in 2017 and later expanded internationally. Google announced that it would shut down the app in August 2022, saying improvements to the main YouTube app had made a separate Go version less necessary.