YouTube adds ‘continue watching’ feature to mobile

YouTube is once again testing out a new feature, and this one isn’t only for Premium users, but seems to be slowly making its way across the platform to all. In a bid to further enhance video watching continuity across devices, the YouTube platform is introducing a new “continue watching” feature for Android and iOS mobile devices.

A feature like this already exists on the web version of YouTube (shown below), which allows users to continue watching a video from where they last left off, even after getting off the computer and using YouTube on mobile in between.

YouTube is already the second most popular “social media” app—ranking second only to Facebook across the globe, and beating out WhatsApp in active user count. YouTube is the place where you can get lost in videos of every genre imaginable, from science and educational videos to video game streams, conspiracy theories, keeping up with your favorite vloggers, and the list goes on.

And because of its widespread popularity, it’s only natural that the video app provides no less than a streamlined watching experience across all platforms it is used on.

Once the new “continue watching” feature rolls out to your own handset, this will mean that even if you were watching a YouTube video on your laptop and your battery dies, or you have to go somewhere, you are able to whip out your phone at any time, open the YouTube app, and you will see the mini-player at the bottom, allowing you to open up the last YouTube video you never finished. It will start playing at most a couple of seconds back from where it dropped off, on whichever device played it previously.

Naturally, in order for your mobile YouTube app to be able to sync your watched videos between various devices, you need to make sure you are logged into the same Google account on your computer, tablet, and phones.

The “continue watching” feature for YouTube on mobile is no longer in beta phase, either, so although we don’t know exactly how YouTube is going about rolling it out, you can likely expect it to hit your phone anytime in the coming weeks.