YouTube ‘Watch Later’ button disappears from desktop site, company working on a fix

Ben Schoon | May 3 2019 - 7:42 am PT

If you manage subscriptions to quite a few channels on YouTube, you probably make good use of the platform’s Watch Later playlist. Over the past few days, the Watch Later button has mysteriously disappeared from YouTube on desktop. Thankfully, it’s not an intentional, permanent change.

For those not familiar, YouTube’s desktop site features a small button on each video thumbnail that appears when you hover your cursor over the video. When clicked, that button allows users to easily add videos to a Watch Later playlist. Recently, that button simply disappeared for most users.

Understandably, this had some users up in arms. While the functionality itself wasn’t removed, switching from the one-click button to an expandable menu was a bit of an annoyance. Thankfully, this isn’t something Google is permanently removing.

Google commented on a support forum thread regarding the problem to confirm that this is simply an unintentional issue. The company is aware of the reports of YouTube’s Watch Later button disappearing from the desktop site and is “actively working to fix it.” Another Googler explains on Reddit (via PiunikaWeb) that this is a “technical issue” and that the button wasn’t intentionally removed.

We’re aware of the issue causing the watch later icon/button to disappear and actively working to fix it. As a workaround until the issue is resolved, you can click on the three dot menu on the right of the video title and add to watch later. If you’re not seeing video previews, you can go to “watch” instead of preview.