YouTube is lining up its next big behind-the-scenes upgrade, and if it works as promised, viewers may get sharper video without burning through as much data. The platform plans to start streaming in AV2, a new video codec, through its web player as early as 2027.
The headline figure is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, the format YouTube currently leans on for much of its streaming. In practical terms, that gives YouTube two options: deliver the same picture quality using less bandwidth, or push quality higher without sending more data. Either outcome is useful for a service that streams staggering amounts of video every day, and for viewers on slower connections or capped mobile plans.
It’s worth being clear about what that number does and doesn’t mean. A 30% efficiency gain doesn’t translate to every video suddenly using 30% less data. Real-world savings will vary depending on the type of content, the resolution and quality settings, and how YouTube chooses to encode each stream. Fast-moving footage and static talking-head videos compress very differently.
AV2 comes from the Alliance for Open Media, the consortium whose members include Google, Apple, Amazon, Intel and Netflix. Like AV1 before it, AV2 is royalty-free, which is a big part of its appeal. Rival codecs such as HEVC and its successor VVC have long been tangled in patent licensing costs, which slowed their adoption on the open web. Having Apple and Netflix in the same camp as Google also improves the odds that AV2 gains broad support rather than becoming a YouTube-only experiment.
YouTube is also pointing to new multi-video capabilities, which could eventually allow viewers to watch several camera angles at once, along with more efficient HDR streaming. However, it hasn’t spelled out which features will actually arrive or when.
The biggest hurdle is hardware. AV1 took years to become genuinely widespread, with dedicated decoding chips only gradually appearing in phones, laptops and smart TVs. AV2 will likely follow a similar path. Google has shown AV2 playback running in Chrome, but most current devices lack hardware built to decode it, meaning software decoding could put extra strain on processors and, by extension, laptop batteries. There’s no confirmed timeline yet for YouTube’s mobile apps or TV platforms.
That makes the 2027 web launch more of a starting gun than a finish line. The real impact of AV2 will depend on how quickly chipmakers and device manufacturers build in support, and whether the next generation of phones and TVs arrives ready for it.
