If you’re watching a video on your YouTube app on your mobile device and you have to stop, you’d want to eventually continue watching it right? YouTube.com has a mini-player on the lower right corner of your web browser where you can now see that video that you stopped watching so you can continue where you left off. Well a second or so from when you stopped, that is. This should make it easier for users to continue using the video-sharing service even if they switch devices.
9 to 5 Google reports seeing this new feature on the YouTube web version. When you’re watching a video on the mobile app and you stop it before it finishes playing, you’ll see a mini-player in the bottom corner of your browser when you open the YouTube website. Under the title, you’ll see a “continue watching” phrase instead of the channel name that is usually displayed there. When you click the play button, it will start playing a few seconds from the time you stopped watching on your app. Tapping anywhere else will bring it to the full video page.
This feature will make it easier to go back to a video that you were watching, but that is if you’re opening it from the web. Currently, you’ll have to either tap on “watch later” or go to your history section to pull up the video from there. While this is not as seamless as returning to a video you’re watching in streaming platforms like Netflix or Disney+, but at least it’s an improvement on the current way of accessing videos that you want to continue watching.
The continuity also applies if you paused something on the YouTube app on Android TV and then you later on access it on your desktop browser. However, if you’re going to go back to the mobile app or even to your Android TV, there’s still no continue watching option. It should make sense that it should work from app to browser and browser to app, but here we are, stuck with just the former.
The continue watching feature on YouTube.com seems to be rolling out to more users now. The only thing you need is to be signed into the same Google Account so it will be able to sync your history.
