YouTube introduces new recap 2025: A step-by-step guide to checking your year in videos

YouTube has just announced that it has finally released its first “Recap,” which offers a personalised summary of your YouTube activity throughout the year.
Like a few music-streaming services already have, YouTube’s Recap gives you a year-end recap of the videos you watched throughout 2025. The feature also expands the approach to YouTube’s main video platform, not just YouTube Music.

What is a Recap?

YouTube’s Recap consists of up to 12 cards you can tap or swipe through. It highlights:

Your top channels. Top interests. Types of content you were into (like cooking, DIY, gaming, vlogs, and more). How your interests changed over time.

Using your viewing history, YouTube also provides you with a “viewer personality” based on your viewing history, complete with a category name. Viewer personalities include Adventurer, Skill Builder, Creative Spirit, Sunshiner, Wonder Seeker, Connector, Philosopher or Dreamer.

If you also listened to lots of music on YouTube Music, your Recap will include some of your top artists and songs you listened to most this year. (There is no clear indication which personality one has, but if you get a particular character, simply check and try to determine if that trait reflects your true character.)

Accessing Your Recap

To see your Recap from 2025, you can either:

• Tap on the “You” tab on the YouTube app for mobile devices, sign in and look for a banner that reads “Your Recap is here” and tap it to open your Recap.
  
• Go to youtube.com/recap to be taken directly to your recap highlights.
• Swipe through the cards, revisit your 2025 on YouTube, and even share your Recap story on social media.

Availability

Note that Recaps are rolling out gradually this week globally. They were first launched last week for users in North America.

Also, your Recap might not be available if your account is managed, or if you paused your watch-history or enabled auto-delete.

Significance

A Recap is not just a cute year-end feature to many. It’s a personalized way to reflect on what you really spent time on this year. Turning viewing data into a narrative offers a new, more human way to make sense of YouTube activity and share it with others.

In addition, YouTube is releasing annual charts that reveal the year’s most popular topics, creators, songs, and podcasts on its platform.