YouTube rolled out a new feature Wednesday aimed at helping users identify the most popular parts of a video they’re watching, along with other changes to its video player. The company says it’s adding a graph that people can use to easily locate and watch the most replayed parts of a video — great for longer videos or those that don’t break down their parts with timestamps or video chapters Videos can be especially helpful.
Previously, YouTube Premium users could YouTube.com/New, but it is now available to all YouTube users, including free and Premium users on desktop, iOS and Android platforms.
While creators often break up their longer videos into chapters or link to selected sections by timestamp, the purpose of the new chart is to give users the possibility to refresh any YouTube video to quickly find the most interesting parts. The clips may also not always be relative to the location of the chapter or timestamp — especially if some video clips go viral.
Also, the feature can help users to point more towards tutorials video, or to the most action-packed clips — like the most-viewed clips in a player’s video.
YouTube viewers can now see this subtle grey graph when navigating through videos with a red playback progress bar. YouTube says that if the chart is high, that part of the video is being replayed frequently. The video thumbnails that appear will also indicate when you hit the “Most replayed” segment.
At the same time as the launch of this product, YouTube is also introducing smart TVs and rolling out support for Video Chapters, a segmentation tool that debuted in May 2020, Chapters allow users to skip forward to a specific part of a video, or easily rewatch that part. Since its launch, YouTube has made it possible to automatically generate chapters, noting that they have now been added to about 20 million videos.
Another new addition, called Single Loop, now allows users to endlessly repeat a single video. To access this feature, users will select the option from the same menu to adjust video quality, turn on subtitles and more.
Additionally, in full-screen mode, a new panel will now appear to display information about the video – such as video description, video chapters and comments. Here users will be able to access quick action buttons, click the like/dislike button directly in full-screen mode, comment, share or add the video to a playlist.
Finally, YouTube has teased that it will “soon” begin another new experiment that will allow users to find the exact moment in a video they want to watch. This will also be available first to Premium subscribers via the YouTube.com/New website, the company said.