Josh Hendrickson
Sometimes YouTube videos you want to launch are extraordinarily long. And while all the content is good for some people, you might need a specific section, like a “How-To.” YouTube’s new chapters feature can help you skip to the meat if the creator supports it anyway.
On Desktop, chapters will show up in the timeline when you scrub through a video. You’ll see large breaks in the bar indicating the beginning and of a section. That’ll make it easy to find specific areas of a video you want to watch or skip past the content you’re currently viewing.
0:00 Get excited…
1:00 The Video Chapters feature is officially here!
1:30 When Chapters are enabled, viewers watch more of the video, and come back more often on average.
2:30 Test chapters on your own videos by adding a set of timestamps starting at 0:00 to the description. pic.twitter.com/FIFLbLImaj— YouTube Creators (@YouTubeCreators) May 28, 2020
The feature looks the same on tablets and phones, but in the case of smartphones, you’ll get haptic feedback as you move between chapters. That should help with the fact that your finger will likely cove the markers.
YouTube isn’t automatically adding chapters to videos, however. It’s up to content creators to add timestamps (preferably with a chapter title) to their video descriptions. The upside to that is, plenty of videos already had chapters markers like that for the benefit of viewers.
The feature is available for all content creators to take advantage of now, but viewers may not see it immediately. The cooking YouTube video above already has chapter descriptions, so you can play it to see if chapters are working for you.
