YouTube Tests New Gesture To Let You 'Scrub' Through Videos

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YouTube is testing a new gesture to let you scrub a video forward or backward by tapping, holding, and sliding in either direction.

YouTube is testing the ability to navigate through the length of a video with a simple tap, hold, and slide gesture. Sliding a finger to either the left or the right allows you to either go back or move forward in time.

This feature was already present on YouTube until it was removed last year after reports of accidental touches skipping or forwarding the video being watched.

However, YouTube has now updated the feature allowing you to tap, hold, and slide your mouse anywhere on the screen.

A “slide left or right to seek” message on top of the video confirms that the gesture has been triggered. Unlike the previous version, where the tapping had to occur precisely on the video’s progress bar.

The new feature, first spotted by Redditor u/FragmentedChicken, is a minor improvement, but one that will make it easier to scroll through the length of a video at moments of awkward multitasking as it will be much easier to manipulate the command by tapping on any part of the video instead of having to nail the progress bar.

The gesture is still rolling out as a server-side test and is not yet live for all users. It has, however, been spotted on YouTube version 16.31.34 beta (APK Mirror).