Is YouTube Bringing Back The Upload Status Bar?

Some things are so basic, there is just no excuse not to have them. For video-sharing sites, you’d think that a video upload status bar would be a standard feature—a progress bar that shows how much time you have left before your video is uploaded and ready for viewing. Yet YouTube just tells you to “Please Be Patient” while showing you an uploading icon that keeps spinning (see below).

Apparently, it used to show a progress bar, which was taken away. (Perhaps YouTube didn’t want people to realize exactly how slow it takes to upload a video). Now, it may be coming back. While uploading a video today, Peter Ha at CrunchGear noticed a progress bar all of a sudden (screengrab above). I still get the “Please Be Patient” routine, so this might just be a bucket test. I have an email into YouTube asking about this.

It is such a basic feature, though. They really need to bring it back. Maybe the uploads are getting fast enough that YouTube isn’t embarrassed any more to visually highlight how long they take. Anyone else see the upload status bar?

Update: The feature is in beta. You can check it out here. And I’ve been able to confirm that YouTube will eventually roll out the feature to all users.