You can finally “Continue watching” YouTube videos on your phone

The process of picking up where you left off when watching a YouTube video on the web has been a pain. You have to pause the video, open the app on your phone, head into the library and history, and then select the video. Or you could just add the video to your Watch Later list, but that’s still not the easiest way to pick up where you left off.

As reported by 9to5Google, a new feature is arriving for the web version of YouTube that allows you to “Continue watching”. When watching a video on the web, you can shrink down the video into the mini-player that resides in the bottom right corner. This makes it so that you can keep watching the videos while looking for another video to watch.

An update is rolling out for the mini-player that adds a “Continue watching” button beneath the title of the video. Previously, you would simply see the name of the channel that the video belonged to. But with this feature, you can now hit the button and select the device that you wish to pick up where you left off.

It appears that while this works for smartphones, tablets, and even Android TV, it’s only a one-way street. This means that you can’t begin watching a video in the YouTube app on your mobile device, and then pick up where you left off on the desktop. Instead, you’ll have to continue relying on the previous methods if you want to move from the phone to the desktop.

9to5Google also states that the feature was first “spotted earlier in the week, but more users are now seeing it on their devices”. We’ve tried giving this a spin ourselves, going from Chrome on the desktop to the Z Fold 3, but it has not shown up for us just yet.