Add “watch later”

[MuntashirAkon]

Describe the feature you want

This should be obvious as YT has this already. “Watch Later” should be available in the Menu that comes when long clicking/tapping a video. This should also appear in the regular playlist section as well.

Is your feature request related to a problem?

No.

Additional context

The current alternative is to create a ”watch later“ playlist manually as a playlist and then add the desired video to the playlist.

How will you/everyone benefit from this feature?

Currently, there's no default “watch later” where we can save all the videos that we may want to watch in future. Even if we add an “watch later” playlist manually in the playlist section, it takes two clicks/taps to add it to go to that playlist and another to add it, which isn't convenient. It should be done within two clicks/taps.

[Stypox]

The solution we chose for this was to add a button to local playlists to remove all of the watched videos. This change will be in the next update, i.e. 0.19.3

[MuntashirAkon]

The solution we chose for this was to add a button to local playlists to remove all of the watched videos. This change will be in the next update, i.e. 0.19.3

How's that solved this? I don't understand.

[Stypox]

We decided not to add a "watch later" playlist, but rather to add the option to remove watched videos in a playlist by pressing a button. This way one can create a playlist that behaves like watch later.

[MuntashirAkon]

We decided not to add a "watch later" playlist, but rather to add the option to remove watched videos in a playlist by pressing a button. This way one can create a playlist that behaves like watch later.

These are not the same. At least not how the YouTube's watch later works.

[Stypox]

I know, but it achieves the same, and also provides more flexibility. See the discussion in #3095

[MuntashirAkon]

I know, but it achieves the same, and also provides more flexibility. See the discussion in #3095

Ability to remove watched videos from a playlist is probably a good feature but I don't know to whom though since non-special playlists are made to catalog our preferences into lists rather than just storing unwatched videos there. It is also not something quite relevant to what I mentioned here. After all, in watch later (or watchlist), you may still want to keep videos there after you've watched it. Also, in this issue, I talked about the accessibility of such playlist rather than whether it's possible to remove watched videos. However, my arguments are irrelevant if you've certain roadmap or something.

Also, I don't know how the linked discussion is relevant here.

[Stypox]

Then I don't see the purpose of a special watch later playlist, when playlists already exist

[besweeet]

Then I don't see the purpose of a special watch later playlist, when playlists already exist

The point is that YouTube makes adding videos to watch later faster and more convenient than a standard playlist.

I'll be sticking with PowerTube due to this missing feature.

[christopher-wilson]

To help explain the request better so that it can be revisited.

Right now, there isn't a good way to queue videos for later. It takes multiple presses and a custom "Watch Later" list, when it should be a one-press action.

One can think of it like a music player:

1. You have an arbitrary number of playlists for whatever purpose
2. You have a queue of what you want to listen soon

This is suggestion is for #2.

It is also important to note, that essentially every media player, from YouTube to Spotify to Plex, have the ability to add videos to a persistent queue.

[xxxserxxx]

I'm mostly interested in the "Watch Later" menu item. Essentially, I want a menu item in the context menu in video lists that quick-adds a video to a pre-defined list. This could be any user-defined list, or some pre-defined playlist like @MuntashirAkon wants, but I care less about special icons or that the list is called "Watch Later".

The most frequent action I perform, second to clicking a video to watch, is scrolling through Hot or my subscription list and selecting videos to watch. Right now, that requires opening the context menu, choosing "Add to playlist," a moderately heavy cognitive search through the lists to find my "watch later" list, and selecting that. Having an entry in the context menu would remove one click and -- more importantly -- the effort of finding and selecting the my most commonly used list, my "Watch Later" list.

Either having a pre-defined Watch Later list mandated by the app, or allowing the user to select which list to use as the quick-access list would be sufficient. The latter would be more versatile and preferrable, but the value (for me) is the quick-access context menu entry. Another even better way would be a star or other icon on each video row that, when tapped, quick-adds the video to a pre-defined list; this would be orthogonal to the very common "select items from a list of items" modality that's common in mobile GUIs.

I don't care so much about the "how"; I just want a very frequent activity to require fewer clicks and less cognitive load.

Edit

I'm quite happy to open a separate ticket if you think my request is sufficiently narrowed and distinct from this ticket, but since OP specifically includes the part I'm looking for -- and I believe their objective is similar although described differently -- I didn't want to create another dupe.

[opusforlife2]

@xxxserxxx Better open a new issue. This is something that will likely be looked at as part of the rewrite.

[WagnerGMD]

Apparently I'm not only to thing about this feature :

• 1 Create 3 lists such as : "Watch Later" and "Keep 1 view" and "Watch again"
• 2 In the case we had view the video just once, you move it from "Watch Later" to the list "Keep 1 view"
• 3 Another case we had view the video several times, you move it from "Watch Later" to the list "Watch again"
• 4 Don't forget the people need sometimes to think about the name for each playlist. It we be the purpose for 3rd list until they find a good name.

Now we are in 2024, could you clarify your opinion @opusforlife2 about this example ?
Because it's clear the function "Mark as watched" could be improve and a long time has past (here we count 4 years) perhaps you have another vision (or change your mind).

PS : Indeed I had try a view times to find something with the search.
From my point of view, there is one match at least (and I'm agreed create another one is useless (over the last decade, it was very boring on several forums because at the end, the conclusion remain : it's easier (good enough) to follow just the first one))

[MFlisar]

Another issue is following: with the current solution it is impossible to have partly watched videos inside the "watch later" list, because if it is watched partly only you can't remove if from the feed.

I do hear podcasts a lot and those are long, some I hear when driving, some only while doing cardio - so I often have a few partly watched podcasts in my feed where they actually do not belong to...

[opusforlife2]

could you clarify your opinion @opusforlife2 about this example ?

I scrolled up. I have not stated any opinion. What are you talking about?

[WagnerGMD]

@opusforlife2 Sorry I made a confusion with the 1st post.

We decided not to add a "watch later" playlist [...]

In fact I was referring to this decision which was write by @Stypox a fews years ago (2020).

Somebody is aware about a plan about to add the function search inside the history ? That would help a lot to find something you had almost totally forget.
Because after a little look, the result has give 10 pages (that's too much).

[opusforlife2]

@WagnerGMD It's not clear what you're asking. Please open a new issue.

because if it is watched partly only you can't remove if from the feed

@MFlisar What are you talking about? This option exists right alongside the one to remove fully watched videos.

[MFlisar]

What are you talking about? This option exists right alongside the one to remove fully watched videos.

In do hide all seen videos from my feed. This means, I can't move a 50% watched video from my feed without marking it as seen. A really working "watch it later" solution would allow me to also enqueue partially watched videos inside the list AND at the same time, remove this partly watched video from my feed without being forced to mark it as watched which does clear my watch progress what I do not want...

What I would like to achive is following:

• watch multiple videos
• move those partly watched videos into my "watch it later" list
• keep the progress on all of those videos
• AND remove those videos from the feed (because I have put them on my "watch it later" list) but without marking it as seen, because this would make my "watch it later" list a "already watched"

If I accept that I can only remove videos from my feed that are marked as watched, I still have a problem: as soon as I start the video from my "watch it later" list, it pops up in my feed again if I do not watch it fully because then it's not marked as watched again and this has the side effect that it pops up in the feed again...

Hope that explains the issues with the manually "watch it later" list.

[opusforlife2]

You know you can add your existing queue into a new/existing playlist, right? There's a button for it. Does that not cover your scenario?

[MFlisar]

@opusforlife2

I made a full feature request that suggests a simple solution for my use case (#11450)

I try to only explain the issue itself as limited as possible:

I want to have unwatched / partly watched videos in a "watch it later" list (actually you don't watch watched videos later...) and at the same time, I want all those videos to be removed from the feed. As far as I can see, there is no work around for this, because to remove the videos from the main feed I have to mark them as watched (which does delete the watch progress of course).