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YouTube is currently experimenting with adding chapters to “a small selection” of videos on Android, iOS, and desktop devices. Rather than searching and clicking on timestamps with hyperlinks and song titles in the video description, this new feature incorporates those metadata directly into the red progress bar built into the video player. This experiment started in early April, which is when posts like Android Police I first wrote about it, but it could be spreading to more people.
This is good news if you, like me, use YouTube as a source to listen to long video game soundtracks and other dark music that is not available on Spotify or other major streaming services. It also seems useful for all kinds of content creators who want to break their video content into small chapters.
Timestamps are more important than ever
I found myself totally winning the lottery in this case and was able to access this new chapter feature in some videos that I frequently watch on my home desktop and on my Android phone. Your mileage may vary, but for me it worked a compilation of videos of soothing melodies from Person 5 soundtrack as well as a load of Masayoshi Takanaka An insatiable high, a 1977 album that instills in me good feelings.
That said, despite the fact that several of my favorite videos have a complete list of timestamps in the description, many of them had no chapters in the video player. Also, the video chapters that support the feature didn’t appear when I tried to insert them into this post. It is a work in progress, so it is forgivable for now.
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As far as I know, this doesn’t work with playlists made up of multiple videos; the experiment seems focused on inserting pauses in longer videos. Perhaps this is one step to make the large number of YouTube videos, specifically music-focused videos like the above, easier to play back track by track on YouTube Music. That being said, the chapter breaks I saw on YouTube were not yet visible in the YouTube Music app.
Now, I have no qualms about navigating to the video description to find a timestamp (thanks to the friendly commenters for doing the service), although, admittedly, it is much easier to scroll between chapters directly through the video. Perhaps my favorite part of the experiment is a little touch interface in the Android app (it wasn’t present in the iOS app when I tried it) that triggers a little vibration while moving a finger across the video’s progress bar to tell you when you’ve passed for the beginning of a new chapter. This is great if you are trying to quickly find the beginning of the next song.
I’m guessing this feature isn’t available to most people yet, and it doesn’t work for many of the long album uploads I enjoy listening to on YouTube. But if you have a minute, it can’t hurt to check your computer and mobile device to see if you can skip to different chapters in your favorite long videos.
