YouTube is one of the few video services and apps that didn't offer a playback queue until recently. The feature first showed upwardly in testing in August then rolled out to everyone in November, but and then far, it'southward remained limited to the spider web and may not be very easy to spot. In this tutorial we'll look at how YouTube's new queue system works and discuss some of its advantages and limitations.

Queue vs. Watch afterwards or playlists

For years now, YouTube has allowed usa to add videos to a Lookout after list (or any other custom list). This characteristic is normally easily accessible on all videos, whether on the web or mobile, and lets u.s. bookmark content nosotros're interested in but don't have the time for right away.

In that regard, queue management is very different. It's more than immediate and imperceptible. You can hands add a video to your queue from anywhere on the website and it'll bear witness up in the mini-player, only one click away from starting playback. With lists, you have to add together the video, detect the listing, cull a video to become started with, then play it. YouTube besides built queues then they but last one session — close your current tab or move to a unlike estimator and your queue is gone, whereas your Watch subsequently list stays untouched and you accept to make clean it manually.

The queue is thus faster and more suited for spur-of-the-moment binging sessions, whereas lists like Sentinel later are better for bookmarking and organizing content you lot'd similar to lookout man in the time to come.

How to add videos to the queue

One of the simplest ways to add together a video to the queue on YouTube web is to just hover over its thumbnail and look for the two buttons that show up on the height right: the clock is forPicket later, the list is for the queue. Simply click that and the video will transfer to the mini-player on the bottom right of your YouTube window.

Top : Hover over a video in a channel to add it to queue. Bottom : This also works in the dwelling tab, subscriptions, search results.

The two quick-activity buttons are available on video thumbnails on the dwelling house page, subscriptions tab, in searches, and on channel pages too. Yet, there are a few places where you won't find them, like within playlists for instance, and then you demand to click the overflow button (iii dots) and cull Add to queue.

Add to the queue from the overflow menu.

Watching videos from the queue

Once yous've added a video, or several, to the queue, you but need to hover over the mini-player on the bottom right to observe the playback controls. These let you lot play, pause, skip, or rewind.

Mini-player controls.

You can also expand the queue by clicking the up arrow side by side to the video's title. This shows your unabridged queue and lets y'all click on any video to start it immediately.

Expand to see the queue.

When you hover over the currently playing video in the mini-player, you can also meet an "expand" pointer on the top left. This switches to YouTube'southward theater or default views, letting you savor the content on a larger calibration but without loosing the queue.

Expand to get a larger view while nevertheless maintaining control over the queue.

Manage the queue

With the queue list expanded, you can drag to reorder videos or delete the ones you lot're no longer interested in.

Drag to reorder or delete a video.

And finally, if you simply close the mini-player, you lot'll lose the current queue. You'll exist warned about information technology, though, so you lot can cancel this earlier it'southward too late.

Y'all'll be warned that the queue will be cleared if y'all close the mini-role player.

Notwithstanding, if you close the current tab, there's no warning: Your queue will disappear and you lot'll have to build it from scratch when you open up YouTube once more. On Chrome, quickly reopening the closed tab (CTRL/CMD + Shift + T) seems to bring the queue back, but I wouldn't trust this. If you lot've built a queue, it's better to avoid closing the tab altogether until you're done watching the videos than to lose it.

A few months later the feature was get-go tested, YouTube queues still seem to suffer from the same limitations equally before. They don't work on mobile yet and there'due south no cantankerous-device saving so you lot have to build the queue again if you switch computers. Hopefully these features volition be added soon.