YouTube announces ‘jump ahead’ experimental feature for Premium users

Andrew Romero | Mar 27 2024 - 8:04 am PT

YouTube is consistently rolling out new features to a small set of users before they become widely available, known as “experiments.” The latest one called “jump ahead” skips to the best parts of a YouTube video for you.

Most users who use YouTube on Android or iOS are familiar with the double-tap to skip feature. Tapping twice in succession moves you ahead 10 seconds. Every additional quick tap skips even more time until you stop tapping where you think you want to be in the video.

YouTube’s experimental jump ahead feature is similar, except that it analyzes user watch data and uses machine learning to automatically pick points of interest in a video. Depending on where you are when you use the jump ahead feature, you’ll end up skipping to the next best point of interest.

It works similarly to the 10-second skip trick. After double-tapping to skip a little, users will see a “jump ahead” prompt on the YouTube video. Tapping that will bring them to the next point of interest in the clip.

YouTube notes that the feature will only work will eligible videos, though they haven’t specified what will make a video eligible beyond on the part of the user, which will need to have a Premium account.

Update: “Jump ahead” is not part of youtube.com/new.

We have yet to see the experiment show up on our devices at 9to5Google, though YouTube noted that this is a small experiment currently available in the US. If you’re able to activate it, let us know in the comments!