Watch live streams

Watch and chat with others on YouTube using live streams and Premieres.

• Live streams let you watch media that’s broadcasted in real-time with others from YouTube.
• Premieres let you watch a new video with creators and their community in real-time.

Find and watch live streams and Premieres

To browse upcoming and current live streams and Premieres:

1. Open the YouTube app.
2. From the bottom, tap Explore.
3. From the top, tap the Live destination.

Tip: Get a notification when a live stream or Premiere goes live by tapping it and then Set reminder.

Watch live streams in Shorts

You may see live streams as you're swiping through the Shorts feed. If you’re interested, tap on Watch Live to enter the live stream. From there, you can interact by chatting, sending reactions, purchasing Super Chats or Super Stickers, or buying a channel membership. You can also swipe up to see more live streams. 

You can also find live streams by tapping a Short you're watching to pause it, then tapping Live at the top of the video player.

Note: Scheduled live streams, Premieres, and horizontal live streams won’t appear in Shorts. 

 

Find and watch live stream replays

Once a live stream is over, a channel may post highlights or a replay of the stream on their channel. Highlights and replays show up as videos on their channel.

The channel may choose to show a replay of the live chat too.

Chat with others

While watching a live stream or Premiere, you can engage with others by sending messages in live chat. Remember to follow YouTube’s Community Guidelines and guidelines for staying safe in live streams.

Some live chats give you the option to support creators by sending them a Super Chat or Super Stickers.

Super Chat and Super Stickers let viewers to purchase brightly colored, pinned chat messages and stickers during live streams and Premieres.

Learn more about using live chat.

Leave reactions

While watching a live stream with Chat open, you can use reactions to respond in the moment to what’s happening. You and other viewers can see anonymized reactions; it will not be possible to see which users left a certain reaction.

You can choose from Heart, Smiley Face, Party Popper, Flushed Face, and “100” reactions.

If you don’t want to see reactions, you can switch your mobile device to horizontal full screen mode.