YouTube is closing out 2025 with a major new feature – and it’s something users have been requesting for years. The company announced the rollout of YouTube Recap, its first-ever personalized year-in-review experience that turns each user’s watch history into a set of tailored insights, personality types, and top content roundups.
It’s a familiar concept – Spotify Wrapped comes to mind – but YouTube is applying it at a massive scale. With billions of users and an incredibly diverse content library, Recap marks a significant step toward deeper personalization on the platform.
The feature goes live today for users in North America and will expand globally throughout the week. It’s accessible directly from the YouTube homepage or the “You” tab on both mobile and desktop.
Recap takes a playful, aesthetic approach to summarizing a user’s viewing habits. It generates up to 12 cards that highlight:
So if 2025 was your “keyboard modding” era or the year you discovered K-pop or deep-dive documentaries, YouTube is ready to remind you.
Music lovers get an even richer experience. Recap integrates tightly with YouTube Music, offering:
It’s clear YouTube is aiming to make Recap not just fun, but a shareable moment – much like Wrapped, Reels, and Shorts have become.
YouTube says Recap was shaped by nine rounds of feedback and more than 50 concept tests before landing on its final format. The company used watch-history patterns to define personalities such as:
These archetypes add a human touch to what is essentially a massive data-driven personalization engine.
YouTube notes that the most common personalities this year were Sunshiner, Wonder Seeker, and Connector, while Philosopher and Dreamer emerged as the rarest – a detail users are already posting about online.
Spotify proved that personalized recaps can fuel massive social sharing, user loyalty, and platform visibility. YouTube has been slower to adopt this kind of moment, but the potential is enormous.
Recap gives YouTube:
This is especially impactful for a platform juggling creators, advertisers, and ever-rising competition from TikTok and streaming services.
YouTube Recap signals a broader shift in how users expect apps to behave.
For modern apps, delight is becoming just as important as functionality – and Recap shows exactly why.
With Recap, YouTube is doing more than offering a fun end-of-year feature. It’s formally entering the era of AI-driven, data-powered personalization – and setting expectations across the app ecosystem.
For developers and digital product teams, Recap is a reminder that the most successful apps in 2026 will be the ones that not only deliver value…
but reflect the user back to themselves.
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