YouTube has offered intuitive video scrubbing via preview thumbnails for what feels like ages at this point, and it’s now ready to share its tech with another key Google product.
Google Drive has been on a roll when it comes to advanced video features. Exactly a year ago, in July 2024, the platform gained the ability to automatically add captions to uploaded videos, followed by a redesign that saw the media player adopt Material 3 Expressive design elements.
The tech giant followed that by adding support for instant playback for newly-uploaded videos in late 2024, and time-stamped transcripts for uploaded content earlier this year.
The latter essentially allows users to search for a specific dialogue in their uploaded video and jump directly to that moment via the timestamp. However, a key requirement here is to know the dialogue you’re looking to jump to. For situations where you don’t, this new Google Drive solution will come in handy.
Finding specific moments just got easier
The cloud-based file storage platform is now gaining YouTube-like thumbnail previews for uploaded videos, which should allow for more precise navigation through video content. Previews appear directly on the progress bar when you hover your mouse pointer over it, taking the guesswork out of jumping ahead.
With the ability to find the right moments in videos, this update improves productivity and the overall video viewing experience in Google Drive.
It’s worth noting that the previews work for videos uploaded via the web or the Google Drive mobile app, but the previews themselves are limited to the web version. Also worth noting is that the feature is limited to newly-uploaded videos, and there seems to be no way to trigger it over existing ones.
Thumbnail previews have begun rolling out today, though don’t expect immediate availability. The feature is scheduled to be widely available to all Google Workspace customers, Google Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts in the second half of August — a few days before August 25 to be specific.
