Twitch finally catches up to YouTube with highly-requested Stream Rewind feature

The twitch logo with a rewind button.

Twitch is finally giving viewers the power to rewind and catch up on moments of live broadcasts they may have missed in a new feature they’ve dubbed ‘Stream Rewind.’

Twitch is one of the internet’s most popular live streaming services, attracting numerous high-profile content creators who have made a name for themselves on the website.

Over the years, it’s introduced a slew of helpful features for both broadcasters and their viewers, such as the ability to clip streams or support streamers by gifting bits and subscriptions.

However, one feature that was sorely missing was the ability to rewind an ongoing broadcast. If you were watching something live, you wouldn’t be able to directly go backward to see what you missed or rewatch a funny moment — instead, you’d have to clip the broadcast or watch the VOD when it was all said and done.

Twitch introduces long-awaited rewind option for streams

On September 25, 2025, Twitch revealed that this is finally changing. As told in a Twitch support article, the platform is rolling out ‘Stream Rewind,’ which is exactly what it sounds like — the ability to rewind a stream as it plays in real time.

Viewers can pause, resume, or scrub back at any point in the stream if they so choose, and get right back to the live broadcast by clicking the ‘live’ button on the video player. Additionally, live chat will continue despite pausing and rewinding, helping to avoid missing out on any important moments.

However, broadcasters have to manually enable this feature on their channels for viewers to use it. On top of this, Stream Rewind is solely available for Affiliated or Partnered broadcasters, and is currently limited to viewers who are subscribed to a streamer’s channel or Turbo subscribers on web only (sorry, mobile users).

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According to a statement from Dan Clancy in a September 24 Patch Notes stream, the rollout for Stream Rewind is being limited to subscribers until the platform figures out a way to prevent it from being used to avoid ads.

“We are launching initially for channel subs and Turbo subs,” Clancy explained. “We are working to make it available for everyone. The reason we are limiting it initially is because there’s work we need to do to make sure ads still work with ad blockers and it doesn’t become a way to get around ads, and that’s important to our streamers to help them sustain their revenue. That takes a little more work.”

With this latest update, Twitch has now caught up to YouTube, which has allowed viewers to rewind live streams on its site for some time now, as long as creators had the feature enabled – without fans having to pay to use it.

Twitch had initially announced this feature all the way back in June, and over three months later, it’s finally here.