YouTube has started testing a new feature that allows Premium subscribers to share ad-free videos with their friends. The new feature allows a limited number of ad-free content shares per month. Here are the details…

YouTube Premium members will be able to share ad-free videos!

YouTube Premium continues to grow despite recent price increases and diversifies its subscription tiers with lower-cost, more limited plans. One of its most striking features is the ability to watch ad-free videos, a key subscription element that attracts people who use the platform for entertainment, business or education.

The company has now started testing a new feature that allows YouTube Premium subscribers to share ad-free videos with friends, family members or other acquaintances. However, this is not an unlimited sharing opportunity. Because the number of ad-free videos shared is limited to ten per month.

The basic logic is pretty simple. If you pay for an ad-free video viewing experience, you can share the same experience ten times per month. In fact, this is a clever strategy that hopes to give more free users a taste of the ad-free experience and eventually attract them to a paid subscription.

How do ad-free links work on YouTube?

The trial is currently limited to YouTube Premium subscribers in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. However, given the history of similar experimental features, this feature may never be released globally or may take some time to expand.

Google’s support page also warns that “Ad-free video sharing is an optional benefit and can be withdrawn at any time.” It also notes that Google may choose to expand it to more users in the near future. For YouTube Premium subscribers in the test pool, the platform offers a special “Share-ad-free” option on its sharing tool.

This option generates a special ad-free watch link, similar to how subscribers to news sites can share gift links that temporarily remove the paid content wall for recipients. In YouTube’s case, there are a number of exceptions to sharing ad-free links. For example, it doesn’t work for premium music videos, user-generated song content, YouTube Originals, Shorts, live streams, and Movies & Series.

Each ad-free link can only be watched ten times, and it only removes commercial breaks from a video for 30 days. Another restriction is that the recipient must be logged into YouTube and watching within the official Android or iOS app.

An important point is that the quota of ten ad-free links is counted per video, not according to how many people it is shared with. Also, if the ad-free link is shared with someone who is already a YouTube Premium subscriber, it does not count towards the monthly quota for sharing such video links.