It hasn't been possible to easily share timestamped video links from the YouTube Android app, which is a bit of a pain if you're used to doing so from the desktop site. This is now something you can do, although there are some significant caveats — the video must include chapters, and you can only share timestamps corresponding to the start of each chapter, for now.

You can add your own timestamp to the end of a URL manually if you know the shortcode (?t=77 at the end will start the video at 1:17, for example), but you also have to work out the time in seconds so it's not always a quick and easy solution. The new feature stops short of the full timestamp sharing functionality we see on desktop, but it's one step closer to that at least.

Chapters in YouTube videos were made official by Google last year, and have been a popular way of skipping to relevant parts of longer videos. Content creators have to add these markers to their own videos, although Google is testing machine learning-powered, auto-generated chapters so we could start seeing more videos with them included. A timestamp button for comments on mobile has previously been tested, too, but this is a bit different since it relates to sharing externally.

 

Tapping Intro > next to the video timer in this example brings up the new menu.

To access the chapter sharing menu, tap on the chapter link at the bottom of the video (the bit that shows you which chapter you're currently on). You now have a list of all the chapters and a sharing button next to each one. You can then select the app you wish to share via or copy the link so you can do go do it yourself. It's pretty simple and works as expected. With any luck, this is a precursor to a more robust sharing menu that will allow you to pull out any timestamp you want, as on desktop.

I tested this with version 16.24.33 of the YouTube app from earlier this month, but we also have a tip that suggests it was possible as far back as version 16.20.35 from May. It's likely this is being delivered server-side and tested with various users irrespective of version, but being up-to-date can't hurt — grab the latest stable update from APK Mirror.

YouTube Developer: Google LLC
Price: Free
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Thanks: Rohit Gusain