Your Recap will show up right on your homepage or under the “You” tab on mobile and desktop. Once you open it, YouTube will hand you up to 12 cards that highlight the channels you kept returning to, the niches you fell down rabbit holes in, and even how your viewing habits changed over the year. The feature also assigns you a “personality type” based on what you watched — from the “Adventurer” to the “Creative Spirit” to the “Connector.”
Music fans get an even deeper dive. If you spent time on YouTube Music, you’ll also see your top artists, songs, podcasts, genres, and even what international music you leaned into this year.
YouTube says the feature took nine rounds of feedback and over 50 concept tests to get right. According to the paltform, it wanted something that felt personal — a sharp contrast to the very public, very chaotic YouTube Rewind videos of the past.
For those who only know YouTube as Shorts, comments, and chaos, Rewind used to be its big annual celebration of its creators. But over the years, it became a lightning rod. The 2018 Rewind became the most-disliked video on the platform, slammed for ignoring major creators like PewDiePie and Shane Dawson and for steering clear of controversies that dominated headlines — from Logan Paul’s boxing matches to bizarre trends like the Tide Pod challenge. Creators ended up making their own “real” rewinds, many of which racked up millions of views and often outperformed YouTube’s official versions.
By 2021, YouTube finally called it quits, admitting that one glossy video simply couldn’t capture the scale and diversity of its community.
Recap is the opposite: instead of trying to summarise the entire platform in one video, it gives every user their own personalised rewind. And yes, you can also save it, screenshot it, and share it.