Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- YouTube users can now include video timestamps when sharing links from the mobile app.
- For the time being, users can only adjust the shared timestamp by manually scrubbing through the video’s timeline.
YouTube is the leading video streaming platform, offering vlogs, documentaries, Shorts, tutorials, and much more. For years, the desktop website has allowed users to share specific timestamps when copying YouTube videos’ URLs. This allows link visitors to watch a shared video starting at the specified timestamp — rather than its beginning. To cater to smartphone users, YouTube is now rolling out timestamp-sharing support to its mobile app.
As per a 9to5Google report, YouTube for mobile now supports adding timestamps when sharing videos from the app. When hitting the share button, a new toggle enables users to add the timestamp to the URL automatically.
Unlike its desktop counterpart, YouTube mobile doesn’t support manual timestamp input. Instead, the app automatically shares your current position in the video. So, to tweak the timestamp before sharing it, you’ll have to manually scrub through the video’s timeline to change its value accordingly.
Nevertheless, this is a welcome addition to YouTube mobile, as it spares smartphone users the need to add timestamps to video links manually. Prior to the automatic implementation, users had to copy the link, then type “&t=1m30s” to link to the video’s 1:30 timestamp, for example. Those unhappy with timeline scrubbing can continue to tweak the timestamp by editing the aforementioned value at the URL’s end as needed.
It’s worth noting that this addition isn’t available to all YouTube mobile users yet. If you don’t spot it on your end, you could try updating the YouTube app to the latest version available and clearing its cache.
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