Questions about the time scrubber in the iOS YouTube app

By Luke, 31 May, 2022

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

First, is there any way to make it show both minutes and seconds? Sometimes when I’m leaving a YouTube comment I want to tag a specific point in the video but it’s only showing time in minutes, particularly for slightly longer videos. Not exactly sure where that cut off is but I cannot figure out any way to see the complete timestamp.
Second, is there any other way for moving around on the scrubber other than swiping up and down to go forward or backward, respectively? I know you can change the number of seconds at skips by going into the settings but that isn’t convenient. Say I’m watching a 45 minute video and I just want to go back to the beginning of the video, or I know that I want to go to exactly 20 minutes in. This is very tedious just having to swipe a bunch of times. I wish I could, for example, double tap on the time scrubber and enter a percentage or exact timestamp. Your tips and strategies are welcome. Thanks!

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Comments

By Brian Giles on Friday, June 10, 2022 - 00:15

I hate the scrubber bar in the YouTube app. You used to consistently be able to double tap and hold, and then drag your finger left or right to skip backward or forward in a video, but that hasn't worked for some time now. Some times I can get it to work, and I even get haptic feedback, but most of the time I just have to turn VoiceOver off, and drag where I think the scrubber bar is on the screen.

Anyone have any better ideas?

By Luke on Friday, June 10, 2022 - 00:15

Thanks Brian for reminding me. That’s another thing I noticed too that I forgot to mention – could do the double tap and hold thing until several months ago. When you say you’ve gotten it to work sometimes, is it just hit or miss or is there some special thing you do that gets that to work?

By Bobcat on Wednesday, August 10, 2022 - 00:15

I have the same problems with the scrubber and I hate it too. Sometimes it even gets stuck in Will not advance or rewind.
I wish there was a better way to send feedback to Google about Accessibility bugs with YouTube.

By Luke on Wednesday, August 10, 2022 - 00:15

Usually companies make clear that they can’t always respond personally to feedback, but it’s definitely worth submitting, especially for ongoing accessibility issues. In the upper right hand corner of the YouTube app you should find a more info button on most screens. When you encounter a bug or want to submit feedback, double tap this button, then choose help and feedback from the menu that appears. Once there, touch near the very bottom of the screen and you should find a submit feedback link. Using the YouTube player from the desktop site on my Windows PC works so well, proving that they know how to get accessibility right. For whatever reason they haven’t chosen to make those same enhancements for the iOS version.