Twitch is trialling a feature that lets you rewind livestreams

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Play that back one more time.

Twitch
(Image credit: Bloomberg (Getty images))

Twitch is trialling a new feature that will let viewers rewind livestreams.

It'll pop the stream back by two minutes, letting you scrub through whatever happened during that time at a variety of playback speeds. It'll handily carry on playing the current livestream picture-in-picture too, so you won't be endlessly catching up (thanks, The Verge).

It's undeniably a useful feature but can bring privacy concerns. IRL streamers—those who stream out in public like Jake'n'Bake—expressed worries that it could be used to analyse streamers' locations. The privacy concerns are certainly valid in the recent context of hate raids but, thankfully, if you have VODs disabled, it'll knock the ability to rewind off as well.

Rewind is being rolled out to a small handful of users, along with two other buttons. A reminder button will push out a notification to remind you of an upcoming scheduled stream. The watch trailer button rather aptly lets you watch a streamer's channel trailer if they have one. All three features will be trialled for around a month, after which Twitch will remove the buttons.

Currently, the main ways to flick back through a stream is either through clips or the VODs themselves, both of which can be a pain to use at times. I've stepped away from my screen on a few occasions and missed a great moment on-stream, so this is a feature I'm excited about.

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Mollie Taylor
Mollie Taylor
Features Producer

Mollie spent her early childhood deeply invested in games like Killer Instinct, Toontown and Audition Online, which continue to form the pillars of her personality today. She joined PC Gamer in 2020 as a news writer and now lends her expertise to write a wealth of features, guides and reviews with a dash of chaos. She can often be found causing mischief in Final Fantasy 14, using those experiences to write neat things about her favourite MMO. When she's not staring at her bunny girl she can be found sweating out rhythm games, pretending to be good at fighting games or spending far too much money at her local arcade.