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YouTube to Display a Popularity Graph for a Video's Most Replayed Moments

YouTube is updating its video player, including a feature that'll show the most popular parts of a video so you can scrub forward to the hype stuff.

Joan E. Solsman Former Senior Reporter
Joan E. Solsman was CNET's senior media reporter, covering the intersection of entertainment and technology. She's reported from locations spanning from Disneyland to Serbian refugee camps, and she previously wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. She bikes to get almost everywhere and has been doored only once.
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Joan E. Solsman
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YouTube revealed some updates to its video player Wednesday, including a graph of the most replayed parts of the video you're watching that'll help viewers jump to moments that get the most replays. This was an experiment on youtube.com/new for YouTube's paying Premium subscribers, and the company is making it available to all viewers watching on desktop or in its mobile apps. 

A screenshot of a video playing on YouTube shows a semi-transparent graph near the video's timeline

YouTube's new popularity graph feature indicates the most replayed portions of a video. 

 YouTube

YouTube is also letting creators put an individual video on endless repeat, a feature called single loop, and it's introducing auto-generating video chapters while also making video chapters available to be viewed across more devices than the Smart TVs and gaming consoles where they work now. An experiment YouTube ran in May 2020 found that for videos with creator-made chapter info, displaying chapters in the player increased average watch time, the company said. 

And viewers watching YouTube in full screen on its app will see a new panel displaying information about the video, like video description, video chapters and comments, as well as quick action buttons to like, dislike, comment, share or add a video to a playlist. 

YouTube is the world's biggest online video source, with more than 2 billion monthly users. 

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