YouTube moves to AV1 by default to the dismay of some Android users
YouTube moves to AV1 by default to the dismay of some Android users

YouTube moves to AV1 by default to the dismay of some Android users

Arif Dikici, who is a part of the Android Video and Image Codecs team at Google, recently announced on LinkedIn that Android will now use an AV1 decoder known as “libdav1d,” which was created by the team behind VLC.
Because they can't use hardware decoding.
Which is fair, but AV1 isn't new any more, and it's pretty universally recognized as better.
Hardware decoding is the whole point. Hardware support is notorious for lagging greatly behind software. Desktop support is not great either right now. It makes you wonder what Google's reason is, they have to be aware that must people won't be able to use it properly.
I know hardware decoding is the point. But you can't just wait until every phone on the planet supports it.
Their reason is that it's a massively better format.