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YouTube will make it easier for you to find the most interesting parts in a video. The company is testing a new feature that will highlight the part of the video that people have re-watched the most. Once this feature goes live, users will see a graph above the existing red progress bar while scrubbing on a video. This graph will indicate viewer engagement for that video. “If the graph is high, it means that part of the video has been frequently re-watched,” the company explains.
First reported by Android Police, the publication notes that this isn’t an entirely new concept. These kinds of engagement graphs for videos can also be found on some other entertainment sites. It’s now coming to YouTube as well.
YouTube announced this experimental feature earlier this week. The company says the feature will be available to a small percentage of viewers on mobile apps as well as the web version during the testing phase. If things go as planned, we could see it roll out widely to users all over the world in the coming weeks. YouTube isn’t providing an ETA (estimated time of arrival) for this engagement graph for videos though. We will keep you updated as and when we have more information.
More new features are coming to YouTube
An engagement graph for videos isn’t the only new feature YouTube is currently testing. The company’s “New” portal, which is home to all upcoming features on the platform, also lists two more experiments. These optional experiments are exclusive to YouTube Premium subscribers though.
Firstly, we have a Google Assistant-powered feature that will provide suggestions for topics related to videos that you’re watching. For example, if you’re watching a video related to black holes, you’ll get suggestions from black hole movies, black hole photos, and so on from Google. You can tap these suggestions to know more about the topic or find more relevant content. The suggestions will appear at the bottom of the description for a video.
YouTube says this experimental feature is only available on Android smartphones in English. It will be available for testing until October 27th. We can expect it to go live a few weeks after that.
The other feature that YouTube is currently testing is picture-in-picture for iOS. As the name suggests, this feature lets iPhone users continue watching videos while using some other apps. The video will appear in a tiny, expandable, floating window on top. This experiment is available until October 31st.