Since its introduction in 2016, Spotify Wrapped has become a bona fide year-event Event™. People talk about their personalized sum-ups for weeks before and after its debut, and though some inevitably find the finished product underwhelming, Spotify has largely monopolized the medium by including unique elements like thank-you clips from artists, and has primed Wrapped for social media sharing by using people’s listening histories to sort them into astrology-style, hashtaggable cohorts.
This year, for the first time, YouTube is trying its own version of Wrapped. Called YouTube Recap, it’s essentially the same thing: a personalized highlight reel that YouTube says “provides users with a fun, shareable summary of their individual viewing journey over the year.”
While Recap is YouTube’s first time giving users their very own EOY reels, it is, of course, not the first time Google’s video platform has attempted to cap off the year with a look-back.
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As you probably remember, YouTube used to release an annual house-made production called Rewind. The idea was to encapsulate a full year of YouTube culture in one video, giving nods to top-watched creators, defining trends and memes, and uberviral songs (“Friday,” “What Does the Fox Say?” and “Gangnam Style” got spotlights). It was an almost archaeological endeavor, memorializing little Dada-esque bubbles of internet existence that, 500 years from now, will make historians wonder what substances a large portion of the population was rockin’ out with.
It was also incredibly divisive.
Less than a week after its debut, Rewind 2018 became YouTube’s most-disliked video ever. (This was back before they removed public dislikes.) Viewers’ core criticism was that YouTube had decided to highlight traditional celebrities like Will Smith and John Oliver while leaving out major creators like PewDiePie and Shane Dawson (who’d had controversial incidents but were still undeniably the biggest names on the platform), and ignoring creator events like the Logan Paul vs KSI match.
At the time, YouTuber Marques Brownlee neatly summarized creators’ criticisms: “YouTube Rewind, in a way, just turned into a giant ad for YouTube.”
This makes sense, because YouTube had just been through the Adpocalypse, and was laser-focused on trying to keep advertisers happy. But its attempt to push brand safety appeal to big media buyers was what did Rewind in. For 2019’s look-back, YouTube ditched the video format and skirted issues of omission by publishing a series of purely data-driven lists. For 2020, it cancelled any kind of EOY recap, citing the COVID pandemic and related financial and social stressors.
Then, in 2021, news came down: YouTube was shelving Rewind permanently.
“Since Rewind started in 2011, we have seen creators from MrBeast, elrubiusOMG, and Slayy Point, to so many more, create their own end-of-year videos, uniquely capturing the year from each of their perspectives,” YouTube told Tubefilter at the time. “It’ll continue to be inspiring to see the myriad of ways the most creative content producers in the world–our YouTube creators–encapsulate the end of year in their video recaps, as YouTube retires its own Rewind video.”
So Rewind may be gone, but it’s not forgotten: It’s back in the news cycle right now thanks to two things:
- OG YouTuber NigaHiga said his experiences on the Rewind set weren’t great
- YouTube unceremoniously privated all Rewind videos so people can’t watch them anymore.
Unclear whether the latter is related to the former, or to YouTube’s rollout of Recap, but it happened.
And YouTube hasn’t been able to let go of wrap-ups completely.
The new iteration gives each viewer a reel with up to 12 “cards” that show their top channels, interests, “viewing habit evolution,” and a distinctly Spotify-y “personality type” based on watch history. Folks who use YouTube Music will also get their top artists and songs, plus “options to dive deeper into genres and podcasts via the YouTube Music app,” a YouTube rep says. (We’re not saying this is why YouTube’s doing Recap, but it’s worth noting YouTube and Spotify are in heated competition for the video podcast space.)
Unfortunately, at least for us, YouTube’s 2025 Recap hasn’t been working. It’s supposed to pop up in a user’s “You” tab, but despite communication with YouTube, we’re still not seeing anything.
YouTube said some things can cause users to miss out on the Recap, including:
- not having “sufficient eligible watch history” from January to late October 2025
- having your watch history paused while the Recap is being generated, or having your history auto-delete set lower than one year
- and finally, not having “a sufficient diversity of topics and creators”
All of these points are a little vague, and we find it frustrating that having your watch history temporarily paused at the wrong moment will derail an entire year’s worth of wrap-up. We’ve seen other folks having similar issues, and some people who have gotten their Recaps have accused it of being “AI slop” that’s not representative of their activity.
Whether Recap sticks around or goes the way of Rewind, it’s obvious people are paying attention to YouTube’s EOY reels. They want to look back on their favorite content of the year. Platforms just have to let them.
