TikTok finally lets people fast forward through videos as it pushes out much longer posts

(AFP via Getty Images)

TikTok is finally letting people fast forward through videos, as it rolls out its new, much longer posts.

While the company has always specialised in short videos – and so fast forwarding has probably not been especially high on many users’ priorities – the company is making those short videos slightly less short with a new update.

It recently announced that the maximum length of video for all users will change from 60 seconds to three minutes, opening up the possibility of much longer posts.

With that, however, watching certain bits of any particular post is likely to become more difficult, since seeing it again will mean watching the whole post.

Now the company is offering users the option to let people scan forward and back through videos, without having to watch on repeat.

The option appears at the bottom of videos and can be used in the same way as the options on other more traditional video platforms such as YouTube.

It appears to be in the process of being rolled out, and so might not appear for all users or all on all videos.

The company has also traditionally only offered the progress indicator on longer videos, and so it might never appear on all posts.

When it does show, there will be a slightly thicker version of the progress line that appears at the bottom.

One press will change how it looks, opening up a dot that shows the progress through the video. Grabbing that dot can be used to scan forward and back, searching through the post.