Last year, YouTube removed one of the most useful features in its app: the ability to tap anywhere on the seek bar to skip to that moment in the video. Apparently, accidental taps were frustrating some users so instead of making it an optional setting, the feature was completely scrubbed (pun intended). Now, a new gesture might make that regressive change a little more palatable.

You can already tap the screen while watching a video to bring up the progress bar, then tap and hold there to scrub through the video. But that isn't the smoothest of experiences as it requires two different interactions and you have to precisely aim for the seek bar on the bottom of the screen.

The new gesture, which was discovered by redditor u/FragmentedChicken, solves both of these (let's admit they are minor) issues. You just tap-and-hold anywhere on the screen then slide that same finger left or right to scrub through the video. A "Slide left or right to seek" message on top of the video confirms that you've triggered the gesture.

There's no other added benefit to this method over doing the same thing on the seek bar. There's no extra granular control; it's just easier and faster to trigger.

The gesture is still rolling out as a server-side test. It's live for me on YouTube version 16.31.34 beta (APK Mirror), so if you want to raise your odds of getting it, you might want to grab that release.