YouTube PS5 app HDR support enabled in update

(Image credit: Sony)

The YouTube PS5 app now has HDR support, letting you watch extra vibrant videos straight from your new-gen platform.

While PS5 launched with native support for HDR media, its video-streaming applications didn't support it across the board. Neither Sony or Google announced the small yet important change to the YouTube app, but video-centric news site FlatpanelsHD posted an image of the app with back-end stats enabled which shows it using an HDR10 video codec.

If you aren't familiar with HDR beyond it being one of those important-sounding words TV and media companies put on their advertisements, it stands for "high dynamic range." It translates to a broader range of brightness between the deepest, darkest thing the screen can display and the brightest, lightest part – letting images appear more vibrant and lifelike. According to FlatpanelsHD, the PS5 YouTube app now supports HDR for videos in up to 4K resolution and 60 frames per second.

Note that you'll need to actually be watching an HDR-enabled video on YouTube to see the difference. While HDR has become more and more common for games, movies, and TV shows across recent years, the majority of video content out there is still SDR, or standard dynamic range.

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.