Watch live streams

Live streams let you watch media that's being broadcast in real time on YouTube. Premieres let you watch a new video with creators and their community in real time.

Find live streams and Premieres

To browse upcoming and current live streams and Premieres:

  1. Open the YouTube app.
  2. At the top left, tap .
  3. Tap Live .

To get a notification when a live stream or Premiere goes live, tap Notify me .

Watch live streams in Shorts

You may find live streams as you're swiping through the Shorts feed. If you're interested:

  • Tap Watch live to enter the live stream or
  • Tap the Short that you're watching to pause it, then tap Live at the top of the video player.

Chat with others

While watching a live stream or a Premiere, you can engage with others by sending messages in live chat. Learn more about using live chat.

To post a message to the live chat:

  1. Join a Premiere or live stream.
  2. Tap Say something.
  3. Enter your message in the text box.
  4. Tap Send.

To respond to someone in the chat feed, type the '@' symbol before their username. Both you and the mentioned chat member will see their username highlighted in the live chat.

Leave reactions

While watching a live stream with the chat open, you can use reactions to respond in the moment to what's happening. Reactions in the chat are anonymised.

Reactions include:

  • Heart ♥️
  • Smiley face 🙂
  • Party popper 🎉
  • Flushed face 😳
  • '100' 💯

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

Use emoji or emotes

Emoji are small pictures that can express an emotion, idea and more. To add an emoji to your comment or message:

  1. To start a message, tap Say something.
  2. Tap .
  3. Select the emoji that you'd like to use.

You can also select YouTube Emote within the emoji picker, located above the standard emoji set. Emotes are only available on YouTube, created by a diverse set of artists for you to use to express your feelings or ideas.

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