How to See the Most Replayed Parts of a YouTube Video

YouTube videos with enough views shows a Most Replayed graph: hover over the progress bar on desktop, or tap the video and drag the seek bar on mobile, and the gray heatmap above the red bar marks the moments viewers rewatch most. The peaks are the most replayed parts, and you can tap any peak to jump straight to that scene.

So, what's the catch? Well, it's not exactly geared toward video creators. That same tool lets viewers skip around, see the good stuff, and leave your video prematurely.

But there is one upside. The Most Replayed graph shows you which parts viewers loved the most. Studying those moments will help you understand what excites your audience and make better content.

What the 'Most Replayed' Tool Shows You

The Most Replayed graph is a heatmap on the video timeline: the higher the line, the more often viewers rewatched that exact moment, and the single highest peak gets the Most replayed label with a thumbnail preview and timestamp. It shows the most and least popular moments within your content.

The graph appears when a viewer seeks through your video to find different scenes. As they do, they will eventually reach a section where the graph peaks. This high point is called the most replayed segment: the scene or collection of scenes viewers watched repeatedly.

At that moment, YouTube shows three things on the screen:

1. A label that reads "most replayed"
2. A thumbnail preview of the most replayed segment
3. A timestamp for the scene

Why Isn't Most Replayed Showing? (And Can You Turn It On?)

There is no switch to turn Most Replayed on or off. YouTube enables the graph automatically once a video has enough viewing data, which usually means tens of thousands of views, and it decides eligibility per video. That means three common situations where the graph is missing:

• The video is too new. Replay data takes time to accumulate, so fresh uploads rarely show the graph in the first days, even on big channels.
• The video has low views. Small videos may never cross the data threshold, and that is normal. Your audience retention graph in YouTube Studio still works either way.
• YouTube turned it off for that video. The platform can show or hide the heatmap per video, and there is nothing a creator or viewer can change in settings.

Using YouTube video chapters will not hide the heatmap either: chapters and the Most Replayed graph show together.

If the graph is missing on your own video and you want the same insight, skip the public player entirely and read the Key Moments report in YouTube Studio.

Where Creators See Replay Data in YouTube Studio (Key Moments Report)

The public Most Replayed graph is the viewer-facing version of data you already own. The creator-facing version lives in the audience retention report, and it works even when the public graph is hidden. Here is how to find it:

1. Open YouTube Studio and click Content in the left menu.
2. Pick a video and click Analytics, then open the Engagement tab.
3. Scroll to the audience retention graph and look at 'Key moments for audience retention'.

YouTube labels the moments for you:

• Spikes mean viewers rewatched or shared that exact moment. These are your private Most Replayed peaks.
• Dips mean viewers skipped or abandoned that section. Treat long flat dips as pacing problems or filler worth cutting, and use them to improve YouTube audience retention in your next video.
• Intro shows how many viewers survived the first 30 seconds, which is usually the single biggest retention decision in the whole video. If your intro line sags, study hooks that keep viewers watching.

The advantage over the public graph: retention data appears on every video regardless of view count, it is percentage-based so small channels can read it, and it updates from day one. If you only have time for one habit, check Key moments on each video about a week after upload and write down one thing to repeat and one thing to cut.

How to Use 'Most Replayed' Insights to Make Better Content

After you identify popular segments, it's time to figure out why they're popular in the first place. What made people return to those scenes? Why were they more valuable than others?

Here are three questions to ask yourself:

1. Did people press rewind because something happened too quickly?
2. Did I introduce an interesting element, like a chart, graph, or cool editing sequence?
3. Did I offer a solution to a problem?

Do this exercise on your channel and see what you come away with. Maybe you'll discover that viewers love comedic moments, rare insights, or crazy stunts. Whatever it is, be sure to add more of it to your content.

The graph's low points are just as useful as its peaks. A long flat valley usually marks a section viewers sat through reluctantly or skipped entirely: a slow intro, a sponsored read that runs long, or a tangent that drifts from the title's promise. When you plan your next video, treat the valleys as a cut list. Tightening or removing those segments raises retention across the whole video.

Will This Tool Affect Your Channel's Watch Time?

If viewers already know the best part of your video, why would they watch the entire thing? And will this tool slowly reduce your channel's watch time?

Not quite. YouTube tested this concern before rolling the feature out, and four years on the answer has held up: no measurable watch-time impact.

"We heard concerns from creators that this feature would decrease watch time or negatively impact some content types. The good news is that in our experiment, we found that there's no statistically significant impact to watch time from showing these graphs," says Pierce (YouTube product manager) in a Creator Insider video.

Is the most replayed tool a gift and a curse for creators? It could be. But knowing your audience through and through is one way to keep growing despite platform changes.

Here's a guide for creating the exact videos subscribers want to see.