Live streams on online services are a little like live TV — if you don’t catch them now, you’re out of luck. But just like DVR made it possible to record and rewind live TV, some streaming platforms have made it possible for viewers to rewind a stream while it’s still live.
For instance, YouTube allows viewers to scroll around during a live stream using the timeline as they would in any other video on the site, which is pretty convenient.
There are plenty of reasons why you might want to rewind a stream that’s still in progress. Maybe you got to a stream late. Perhaps you missed something crucial because of a commercial interrupted your content, and you want to go back. Unfortunately, Twitch makes rewinding a live stream more complicated than other platforms like YouTube.
Twitch has experimented with the ability to rewind streams. However, there is currently no straightforward “rewind” button, nor can viewers access a timeline to scroll around on a live stream. Still, there are a few workarounds available. Here are a few methods to rewind a Twitch stream.
How to Rewind a Twitch Stream Using Clips
Since Twitch’s Clip feature grabs the last 90 seconds of a currently active stream, it lets you rewind a live stream in a roundabout way. Of course, this is limited to rewinding only a minute and a half back.
However, it’s handy if you missed something crucial that just happened and want to jump back a short amount of time — say if an ad break had unfortunate timing and intruded during a crucial moment. Here’s how to rewind a Twitch stream using clips.
Step 1) Click the clip button in the bottom right of an ongoing stream.
Step 2) Shift the timeline bar to go as far back as you’d like. Actually publishing the clip is optional.
Streamers can change permissions for making clips. Sometimes they will limit this ability to Followers or Subscribers. If that’s the case, you’ll have to be in the appropriate category to use this method.
How to Rewind a Twitch Stream Using Recent Broadcasts
If you want to go back in a live stream further than taking a clip will let you, this is the easiest method. However, it will only work if the streamer you’re watching has automatic VODs enabled.
Step 1) Click on the user icon of a currently live streamer.
Step 2) Under “Recent Broadcasts,” click on the top left-most video, which should be the currently-live stream. This will allow you to scroll through the stream using the video timeline as you would on any other video.
How to Rewind a Twitch Stream Using a Browser Extension
Because Twitch doesn’t make it easy for viewers to rewind streams on the platform itself, third-party tools have sprung up to fill in the gap. One such tool is the Twitch DVR player. Here’s how to use it.
Step 1) Install the Twitch DVR player extension on Chrome or another compatible browser.
Step 2) Use the added timeline at the bottom of the stream to rewind like you would a non-live video on Twitch.
Note that Twitch allows streamers to disable the automatic creation of VODs, and that this extension and similar tools are dependent on VODs being enabled to work properly. If the streamer you’re watching has turned VODs off, the Twitch DVR player won’t let you rewind, just like you can’t use recent broadcasts to effectively rewind.
Why Doesn’t Twitch Have a Simple Rewind Feature?
Apparently, implementing a simple rewind feature would be difficult for Twitch at this point. On a Q&A stream earlier this year, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy said “The way Twitch does its streaming and all that, and the way it stores its VOD, it is technically complex and potentially expensive [to implement rewind].”
Presumably, YouTube’s live streaming architecture is built differently, which makes it simple to jump around in a video while it’s still airing.
Clancy added, “There is a way to do it that isn’t too expensive, to allow limited rewind… but general rewind function, because of the way we built our streaming, the way we built our VOD… it would be an overhaul if you wanted to go back twenty minutes or thirty minutes.”
Is Twitch Getting a Rewind Feature in the Future?
In the Q&A stream, he explained that a full YouTube-style rewind capability likely wasn’t in the cards. Clancy also suggested that a restricted rewind feature could be coming at some point, saying, “A limited rewind is a feature that I would like to have in there, so you can pause and rewind a little to see what you missed during a commercial break or something like that.”
In fact, Twitch did actually beta test a rewind feature in recent years, but as of this writing they haven’t rolled it out broadly to all streamers.
Again, short of major overhauls to Twitch’s architecture, any such feature would only allow viewers to rewind a small amount, likely around the same distance that can be captured by clips, the rolling edge of the stream that is cached by Twitch’s systems.
The Future of Rewind on Twitch
It can be somewhat frustrating that Twitch doesn’t easily let viewers rewind a live stream, but there’s not much individual streamers can do about it. As noted above, Twitch seems unlikely to implement a true rewind feature on the scale of YouTube’s ability to jump around during an active stream anytime soon.
Twitch claims that adding such a feature would not only be technically difficult but would add considerable expenses to its operating costs due to the sheer volume of content they stream.
With that in mind, you’ll have to make the best of clips, the recent broadcasts feature, and third-party tools like Twitch DVR player to rewind. If those fail you, well, then try to make a point of tuning into your favorite streamers as soon as they go live.
