Google has updated the YouTube app introducing a new gesture that will be very convenient for all those who watch long and complex videos.
Today, on YouTube, millions of users watch millions of hours of videos of all kinds: from short videos of Shorts to long and complex reviews of smartphones and electronic devices, through news reports and much more. But if for short videos YouTube is still chasing other platforms (TikTok above all), the same can’t be said for long and complex videos: in this case YouTube is the ideal platform to publish and watch this kind of content.
One of the reasons for this lies in a feature, introduced in May 2020 and then reworked in October: chapters. Thanks to chapters, the video author can divide a long piece of content into sections, allowing his viewers to jump immediately to the parts that are most interesting to them. Since October 2020, in fact, the list of chapters is included in the description of videos and jumping from one chapter to another is much easier. But not in all cases: when the video is watched in full screen on a smartphone or tablet, in fact, the description is not seen and, therefore, the list of chapters is not seen either. Google has noticed this problem and has updated the YouTube app by introducing a new gesture that allows us to zap through the chapters of a video in an extremely convenient way. Unlike other gestures, it’s not something you can do by accident, but a very precise gesture that you do precisely to get the expected result.
YouTube: zapping with gesture
The gesture in question is very simple: just double-tap with two fingers simultaneously on one side of the screen (right to go to the next chapter, left to go to the previous chapter).
The two fingers must be placed close together and the gesture must be quick and sharp, so it is very unlikely to skip a chapter by accident with an unwanted tap. Of course, the video must be divided into chapters, otherwise the gesture described above will have no effect.
New YouTube gesture: how to activate it
The new gesture for jumping between chapters with a double tap of two fingers is already available, even in Italy, on all apps. We tested it on YouTube for Android in version 16.30.34 and it works perfectly.
If you still can’t use it (assuming the video you’re trying it out with really has chapters) then you’ll need to update the app and wait for the feature to arrive on your device. It won’t take long: Google is distributing it worldwide.