YouTube Live gets a Twitch and TikTok inspired update

YouTube announced a slew of new creator-oriented updates at its Made on YouTube 2025 event on Tuesday.

However, it appears YouTube Live received the biggest overhaul of the day, with the video giant making several announcements regarding new live streaming features coming to the platform.

According to YouTube, more than 30 percent of daily logged-in YouTube viewers watched live content in Q2 2025. Livestreams are growing on YouTube, and it appears the company realizes it needs to compete with some of the more unique livestreaming features on competitor platforms like Twitch and TikTok.

Playables on Live

YouTube’s first announcement regarding its new streaming capabilities takes a previously launched feature, Playables, and brings it to YouTube Live. 

According to YouTube, with the new Playables on Live, creators will have access to more than 75 “lightweight” (read: casual) games like Angry Birds Showdown and Cut The Rope to play on their stream while interacting with their audience.

Vertical and Horizontal Formats

Short-form video platforms like TikTok and YouTube’s own YouTube Shorts have made vertical video quite popular online. However, most streamers have had to make a choice between choosing vertical or horizontal video when streaming to their live video platform of choice.

Credit: YouTube

YouTube will soon allow both formats of video for their streamers, with the platform providing a livestream in both vertical and horizontal formats with one unified live chat for all live viewers to interact in. The company pointed out how this will help its streamers with discoverability on the platform, which makes sense as a significant number of viewers seek out one format over the other.

Live practice mode 

YouTube announced a new live practice mode for streamers so that they test run their streaming setup and try out new platform features without having to go live. 

This is an interesting feature for YouTube to launch at this juncture. Many regular streamers likely already have their own system setup to do this. But, by building it into YouTube directly, the company is signaling that they may be looking to create more live streamers out of their current video creator user base.

React Live

Reaction videos are still all the rage on social media; it’s an especially popular format on YouTube competitor TikTok. 

This probably inspired the idea for YouTube’s new react live feature on YouTube Live. Other streamers and creators will be able to go live on their mobile device in direct reaction to another simultaneously live streaming video, allowing users to provide real-time commentary on livestreams.

AI-powered clips

This is a big one for creators: AI-powered clips are coming directly to YouTube.

Many livestreamers have paid subscriptions to third-party services where they upload their hours-long livestreams and receive short clips of their stream’s best moments determined by AI.

Credit: YouTube

According to YouTube, its own AI-powered highlights will pull the best content from streamer’s live videos and automatically generate YouTube Shorts videos for them to share.

New live monetization options

YouTube announced two new monetization formats for streamers: One is ad-based and one is membership based.

Video ads are nothing new on YouTube and livestream viewers are likely used to having their favorite streamer interrupted by an ad. However, regular viewers probably noticed some big streaming channels debut a new format that YouTube will now rollout platform-wide: Side-by-side ads.

Side-by-side ads display a video ad next to a live video stream so that the viewer doesn’t miss whatever is happening in the stream while the ad is playing.

Credit: YouTube

The other ad format that YouTube announced is for creators with their channel membership feature activated. Streamers will be able to cut off free viewers during a stream and switch the same stream to a subscriber-only broadcast with the new members-only live stream feature.

By utilizing this monetization option, streamers could bring in new viewers with a free portion of their live show and then convert some of them into paying members by only allowing paid subscribers to view the rest of the stream.