Where do I find viewed vs swiped away in YouTube Studio?

Open YouTube Studio, go to Content, choose the Short, open Analytics and select Engagement. The How viewers engaged card shows Stayed to watch next to Swiped away.

What is a good viewed vs swiped away percentage on YouTube Shorts?

YouTube defines the split without publishing a target. Judge each Short against your own recent Shorts of the same type and length, and check retention for the viewers who stayed.

Is a higher stayed to watch percentage better?

A higher share means that more of the times the Short started, viewers stayed past its initial seconds. It says nothing about how long they watched after that, which is what retention covers.

How is viewed vs swiped away different from audience retention?

The split covers one decision at the start of a Short. Average view duration, average percentage viewed and retention describe what happened next, among the viewers who stayed to watch.

How many seconds before a swipe counts as swiped away?

YouTube does not publish a number. Its help pages describe staying to watch past the initial seconds of a Short, so treat the split as the opening decision rather than a fixed second count.

Does Format Finder measure my viewed vs swiped away split?

Your real split comes from YouTube Studio. Format Finder reviews the Short's craft, and when you attach a screenshot of its Engagement tab, it reads Stayed to watch and Swiped away and any retention graph shown.

YouTube Shorts viewed vs swiped away: what the split means

The short definition

YouTube Shorts viewed vs swiped away is the YouTube Studio split between the times viewers stayed to watch a Short past its initial seconds and the times they swiped away, now labeled Stayed to watch and Swiped away, so it measures the opening decision only and is best judged against the creator's own recent Shorts of the same type rather than a universal target.

What viewed vs swiped away means

YouTube introduced the metric on its YouTube Creators channel as Viewed (vs Swiped Away), which shows the times "viewers chose to watch your Short instead of swiping past it". YouTube's pages now use other names. The Help Center lists it as Stayed to watch, in a report called How viewers engaged, and defines it as "the percentage of times viewers stayed to watch past the initial seconds of a Short". YouTube's Shorts analytics tips use a third name, How many chose to view, for "the percentage of times that viewers viewed your Shorts versus swiped away".

Read it as two sides of one split: Stayed to watch is the share of times a Short kept the viewer past its opening, and Swiped away is the share of times the viewer moved on. YouTube words both as a percentage of times, not of people.

The split covers the opening and nothing else. YouTube's help pages call that window "the initial seconds", and YouTube's blog, explaining engaged views, says a Short in the Shorts feed counts as engaged if you let it keep playing for "some amount of seconds after that first frame". YouTube does not say how many seconds that is, so treat the split as a record of the opening decision, not of a fixed point in the video.

It also records that viewers stayed or left, not why. The reason is a hypothesis you form by looking at what was on screen in the opening and at who the Short reached.

Where YouTube Studio shows the split

The split is reported Short by Short. YouTube's help for the Engagement tab gives the path: in YouTube Studio, select Content, choose Analytics on the video, then select Engagement. The Studio app follows the same order. On a Short's Engagement tab, the How viewers engaged card shows Stayed to watch next to Swiped away, with the Audience retention report below it.

For all your Shorts at once, select Analytics, then Content, then the Shorts chip. YouTube lists How viewers engaged among the Shorts reports there.

Several numbers on these screens are easy to mix up. YouTube describes them this way:

Stayed to watch and Swiped away: The share of times viewers stayed to watch past the initial seconds of a Short, and the share of times they swiped away instead.
Shown in feed: Described as "the number of times that your Shorts showed in the Shorts Feed". YouTube introduced it together with Viewed (vs Swiped Away).
Views: For Shorts, the number of times a Short "starts to play or replay, with no minimum watch time requirement". Starts that end in a swipe count here.
Engaged views: How many times viewers stayed to watch past the initial seconds, "not including any loops". It is YouTube's earlier Shorts view count under a new name.
Average view duration and average percentage viewed: Minutes watched, and share of the video watched, on average "among those who stayed to watch". YouTube calculates both from engaged views and their watch time.

Because views count every start, a Short that YouTube shows widely can collect a large views count even when many of those starts end in a swipe. Engaged views and the stayed side of the split leave those plays out. YouTube describes the two in the same words but publishes no formula that joins them, so record each number under YouTube's own name.

How the split relates to retention

The split and retention describe two different stages of a Short. The split covers one decision at the start: stay past the opening or swipe away. Retention describes what happened next. YouTube's blog notes that "the vast majority of analytics remain anchored on engaged views", and names retention among the metrics whose calculation did not change when the view count did.

So a Short can win the opening and lose the middle: a high stayed share with an audience retention line that falls away after it. Another Short can be swiped often yet keep most of the viewers who stay. The two numbers answer different questions, so work on the one your evidence points to.

Past the opening, look at the Audience retention report. The guide to reading a retention curve and fixing what is broken walks through the shapes a retention line takes, and the drop-off diagnosis explains how to match a lost moment to what was on screen. Their examples are TikToks, but the method carries over to a Short.

Why the split matters

The split isolates the opening. Everything it counts happened in the initial seconds: the first frame, the first words and the on-screen text. That makes it the cleanest YouTube number for testing how a Short starts, because it does not mix the opening with the middle or the ending. It shows how the opening did whatever the views count says, but not why YouTube showed the Short to the people it reached.

What is a good viewed vs swiped away percentage?

There is no universal stayed to watch percentage to aim for. The YouTube pages listed below define the split without publishing a target, and figures that circulate online as a good swipe rate do not come from those pages. YouTube's own advice for Shorts analytics points the other way: "it's key to still compare videos of the same type", because "Audience behavior is different across formats, therefore success may look different". When a Short does well, YouTube suggests looking into what made it popular while you "avoid comparing each video against a viral hit".

The benchmark that holds up is your own. Judge a new Short against your own recent Shorts:

Build a comparison set. Pick recent Shorts of similar length in the same format, such as a tutorial, list, story or reveal. Include ordinary Shorts as well as your best, as YouTube suggests looking at content that is performing well and content that isn't.
Record the same fields for every Short. Length, Stayed to watch, average percentage viewed, the main traffic source, and a note of the first frame and first line.
Compare with the middle of your range. Measure the new Short against your typical result rather than your single best Short.
Name the opening that differs. "Kept more viewers past the opening than my recent tutorials" is a finding you can test again. "The swipe rate was bad" is not.
Compare settled numbers. YouTube's page on how engagement metrics are counted says "we're constantly confirming and adjusting engagement events", so compare Shorts once their numbers have settled.

Where the Short was found matters too. YouTube's How viewers find your Shorts report separates the Shorts feed from YouTube search, channel pages and other sources. Searchers and feed scrollers arrive in different states, so note the mix before calling one result better.

When a Short's stayed share sits below your own range, the evidence points at the opening and at who saw it. Change one thing in the opening for the next Short: the first frame, the first line or the on-screen text. The viral hook formula covers named opening patterns to test.

Examples: which number answers which question

Question	Number to check	What it cannot tell you
Did the opening keep people?	Stayed to watch against Swiped away	Why viewers swiped
Was this opening better or worse than usual for me?	Stayed to watch against your own comparison set	Whether the same change will work in another format
How often did the Short start to play?	Views	How many of those starts ended in a swipe
How long did viewers who stayed keep watching?	Average view duration and average percentage viewed	Where in the Short they left
Where did viewers leave after the opening?	The Audience retention report	Why they left

Related terms

Instagram skip rate. Instagram's Reels insights measure of how often a Reel's opening was skipped. It also covers the opening, on a different platform with its own definition. See the Instagram skip rate entry.
TikTok retention rate. TikTok's per-post graph of how much of a video viewers watched. It covers the whole video, while the split covers one decision at the start of a Short. See the TikTok retention rate entry.
Hook. The opening line and first visual, the part of a Short the split measures. The viral hook formula lists the named opening patterns.

How Format Finder uses the split

Format Finder's Analyse Your Videos reviews a Short you upload or link: its hook, transcript, frames, pacing and payoff. After the Short is live, you can attach a screenshot of its Engagement tab. When the screenshot shows the How viewers engaged card, it reads the Stayed to watch and Swiped away figures. When it shows the Audience retention graph, the analysis estimates how much of the audience was still there at about 3 seconds, picks out the most meaningful drops after that, and lines each one up with the moment in the video, with a likely cause and a change to test. That early read is Format Finder's estimate from the curve and is separate from YouTube's split. Without a screenshot it reviews the craft, and it does not invent a stayed or swiped figure. The video analysis tool guide shows the full workflow and what each input can establish.

Test your next opening against your own Shorts

Plan the next Short from 65+ proven formats, then use Analyse Your Videos to set its stayed and swiped split beside a review of the opening.

See plans and get started

Sources

The metric names, definitions and Studio paths come from these YouTube pages. Format Finder's analysis workflow is described as the current product works.

Frequently asked questions

What does viewed vs swiped away mean on YouTube Shorts?: It is the split between the times viewers stayed to watch a Short past its initial seconds and the times they swiped away. YouTube Studio now labels the two sides Stayed to watch and Swiped away.
Where do I find viewed vs swiped away in YouTube Studio?: Open YouTube Studio, go to Content, choose the Short, open Analytics and select Engagement. The How viewers engaged card shows Stayed to watch next to Swiped away.
What is a good viewed vs swiped away percentage on YouTube Shorts?: YouTube defines the split without publishing a target. Judge each Short against your own recent Shorts of the same type and length, and check retention for the viewers who stayed.
Is a higher stayed to watch percentage better?: A higher share means that more of the times the Short started, viewers stayed past its initial seconds. It says nothing about how long they watched after that, which is what retention covers.
How is viewed vs swiped away different from audience retention?: The split covers one decision at the start of a Short. Average view duration, average percentage viewed and retention describe what happened next, among the viewers who stayed to watch.
How many seconds before a swipe counts as swiped away?: YouTube does not publish a number. Its help pages describe staying to watch past the initial seconds of a Short, so treat the split as the opening decision rather than a fixed second count.
Does Format Finder measure my viewed vs swiped away split?: Your real split comes from YouTube Studio. Format Finder reviews the Short's craft, and when you attach a screenshot of its Engagement tab, it reads Stayed to watch and Swiped away and any retention graph shown.