After testing video previews on YouTube with a limited set of users earlier this year, Google is now rolling out the feature to all users visiting the website using Chrome or Opera on the PC.
The YouTube video previews are short 3-second animations that give an idea about the video content to the user. According to Google, these animations will be generated for videos that are longer than 30 seconds. However, it must also be noted that not all videos may qualify for these previews. A preview animation will be added to eligible videos within two days of upload.
In order to view the animated previews, a user simply needs to hover the mouse pointer over the video"s thumbnail on YouTube"s desktop website using a supported browser. The feature is currently available on Chrome versions 32 and up, and Opera 19+.
Google has been constantly working on improving the YouTube viewing experience for users and video previews is just one of the features to roll out this year. In the near future, we may see a dark mode for the website become official on PCs as well.
Source: Google Support via UberGizmo