YouTube has historically lacked a built-in queue, and many users have instead turned to playlists. The service is now officially testing “Add to queue” on the web, and all are free to try it out for the next two weeks.
Announced today, it can be enabled from YouTube.com/new, the service’s homepage for enabling experimental features. “Create a queue” is available until September 10, with clicking “Try it out” enabling immediately.
All thumbnails with this experiment gain an “Add to queue” button that uses a list icon. It appears underneath “Save to Watch later,” and can also be accessed in the overflow menu beside all videos.
When on the Home feed, search results, or channel page, adding a video to queue will immediately open the Miniplayer at the bottom-right corner. The actual queue list is hidden by default, but can be quickly expanded. You can rearrange the playback order and delete items.
If you’re watching a video, queued-up items appear in the top right. There is a button to quickly “clear” all saved videos, while your current queue will replace the default “Up next” suggestion. Queues will persist when you close your current YouTube window and come back to the site later. Users will be promoted to restore after returning, or start from fresh.
Hopefully, this feature will be synced across your mobile devices going forward, and that an equivalent functionality comes to Android and iOS. It’s less of a hassle than creating a playlist, and much more temporary in nature. During this two-week period, YouTube is getting feedback before a wider launch if everything is successful.
How to enable YouTube queue:
- Visit YouTube.com/new
- Navigate to “Create a queue” experiment
- Click “Try it out”
- Make sure you’re signed into YouTube when browsing videos
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