If you’ve ever watched a long-form YouTube video or tutorials, you might notice that in the video’s description, the creator might link timestamps so that users can skip directly to the part of the video that they want to go to. For example, they can skip out on the introduction, or jump to the part of the tutorial that they are interested in.
This isn’t necessarily the most efficient method around, but it works. However, thankfully YouTube has heard the requests of its users and have since announced that they are now rolling out video chapters. YouTube has been testing out this feature for a while now, and it seems that due to popular feedback, the company has opted to make it a permanent feature.
So, how does it work? These chapters will be visible at the bottom of the video player and shows timestamps that users can click on to jump to them directly. However, we should note that this is a completely optional feature and video creators will need to include it manually, so not all videos might take advantage of it.
0:00 We heard you and added Video Chapters.
0:30 You liked it.
1:00 Now it's official: Video Chapters are here to stay.
1:30 Creators, try Chapters by adding timestamps starting at 0:00 to your video description. Viewers, scrub to find exactly what you’re looking for.
2:00 Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/bIHGsGVmyW— YouTube (@YouTube) May 28, 2020
The new video chapters feature should be rolling out for the web version of YouTube along with the iOS and Android apps, so do keep an eye out for it if this sounds like something you might be interested in.
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