YouTube makes it easy for TV users to skip to the best bits of videos

It seems YouTube is finally giving its TV app the AI feature that lets you skip to the most interesting parts of a video. Android Authority’s Mishaal Rahman reports that the Jump Ahead perk for YouTube Premium subscribers appeared on his Nvidia Shield TV yesterday, a feature that was previously exclusive to YouTube’s web and mobile platforms.

Jump Ahead gives users an easy way to automatically get to the best bits of a video by using AI to analyze the most-watched segments that viewers typically skip to. YouTube started testing the feature last year before later releasing it for Premium subscribers on web and mobile, but those who prefer watching on the big screen — which is now the primary viewing source in the US — have been left wanting until now.

Premium subscribers can activate Jump Ahead by double-tapping the fast-forward button on the video player, which then takes viewers to the next point in the video that most users view. This works differently on TVs, according to YouTube’s support page, requiring users to press the right arrow on their remote to see the next most-watched section, as indicated by a dot on the progress bar. Pressing the right arrow again will then take users to that point in the video, instead of skipping ahead by ten seconds as usual. Rahman says that a message reading “Jumping over commonly skipped section” appeared when using the feature.

While YouTube’s support page confirms that Jump Ahead is now “available on Living Room,” the scale and pace of the rollout are unclear. The feature doesn’t appear to be widely available on TVs yet, and YouTube hasn’t made a launch announcement. A Reddit user has reported seeing the feature appear on their Samsung TV, however, and Android Police also spotted it on a Google TV streamer. We have asked Google for clarity on the rollout.