YouTube allows users to share videos with timestamps in the browser. That has always been the case. You can simply pause the video create a shareable link and send it to your friend. Now when your friend clicks to play that video, it begins streaming from the time you paused it. YouTube is pushing an update allowing users to share videos with timestamps on mobile apps too.
Desktop
- Open YouTube in your favorite browser.
- Click on the Share button.
- Check Start at option and select the specific time you want the video to play when someone clicks the link.
But what about the YouTube mobile app? Until now, there was no option to do this on the phone. However, according to the latest report by 9to5Google, YouTube is testing this feature in the Android app. In the screenshot, you can clearly see that after tapping the Share button, there’s a toggle on the upper right side of the share sheet that lets you share the specific time and current video. However, unlike YouTube web, there is no option to enter the time manually.
On the other hand, it is unclear which mobile app version will enable the timestamp feature. It seems like the feature is being rolled out to a limited set of users and will be made available soon.
For now, you can use the old-school trick that most people have been using to share a specific part of a YouTube video, which is adding ‘&t=’ at the end of the shared link. For example, the usual URL for the YouTube video looks like https://youtu.be/R71N4LorUhI, and if you want to start the video at 2 minutes and 47 seconds, add ‘&t=2m47s’ at the end of the link. This is how it will look now: https://youtu.be/R71N4LorUhI&t=2m47s.
