YouTube is rolling out a new annual Recap feature that gives users a quick snapshot of their biggest viewing habits over the past year.
The experience pulls together up to 12 personalised cards based on your watch history, highlighting your top channels, topics, deep-dives, and how your tastes have shifted over time.
It’s hard not to see the similarities to Spotify Wrapped. Like Spotify, YouTube will also assign users a “personality type” that reflects their viewing behaviour – names like Adventurer, Skill Builder, and Creative Spirit – which line up neatly with Spotify’s approach to listening personalities.
Several other services have tried their own year-end roundups, but this is YouTube’s first attempt at doing it for videos beyond music.
Recap is available starting today for users in the US, with a global rollout following this week. You can access it on both mobile and desktop by tapping the dedicated Recap button on the homepage or by heading to the “You” tab in the account menu.
Some music-related stats will appear in the main YouTube Recap, such as your top artists and most-played songs, but this doesn’t replace the existing YouTube Music Recap. The music app will continue to offer its own standalone look-back covering songs, artists, genres, and podcasts, so users essentially get two separate roundups, one for video and another for purely audio habits.
Alongside the launch, YouTube shared a series of trend charts offering a look at what dominated the platform in the US this year. Unsurprisingly, MrBeast remains the most popular creator, while The Joe Rogan Experience holds its spot as the top podcast. The platform also pointed out how certain music trends shift depending on format, noting that the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack performed strongly in overall views but didn’t gain the same traction on Shorts.
With Recap, YouTube is leaning into the same personalised storytelling that’s made Wrapped a cultural moment each December, and given how much time users spend on the platform, it might be one of the more revealing year-end rundowns yet.
