When you open a YouTube video, you may encounter a label right above a comment that says “Highlighted Commented” in dark gray letters on a light gray background. Highlighted comments serve a slightly different purpose than pinned comments, which are displayed at the top of the comments section below the video and are selected by the creators. Highlighted comments are actually user-specific ones that YouTube highlights, making them easier to see. No other user can see these highlighted comments, unlike pins, which everyone sees.
You can think of this as similar to bookmarking a page in Chrome, or even bookmarking links in iMessage; no one knows what you’ve actually bookmarked unless they access your account or see your screen while you’re logged in. Even though this YouTube feature is more personalized, it can seem a little annoying if it’s just another way to redirect your attention in a busy comments section. But there are things you can do to make things more appealing.
An example is that you can share them. It turns out that everyone has a unique URL that can be copied and sent to anyone as long as the “lc” remains in the URL. And sometimes, highlighting and sharing related comments is a fantastic way to point out funny reactions or quirky responses to a particular video.
How to highlight a YouTube comment and share it?
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The process of highlighting and sharing a YouTube comment does not require a YouTube Premium subscription to access this somewhat hidden feature; anyone with an account can do this. Some methods require a bit of luck, depending on what you’re trying to highlight. Essentially, the easiest, luck-based way to highlight a comment is to click on a notification to view the comment (like someone liking or replying to one you put on a video); YouTube will then mark the alert as a highlighted comment.
If you’re a YouTube creator and end up clicking through your notifications when someone adds a comment, that comment may also be highlighted for you. If you want to show everyone a particular comment instead of just sharing it, you should consider using the pinning feature to give it public attention. The other method to highlight a comment on someone else’s video is to manually click on the timestamp of their post. The timestamp can be found next to the username the comment was posted on. Clicking on it will refresh the page and move this comment up, labeling “Highlighted Comment” below this video.
Once you highlight a comment, either by clicking alerts or selecting a comment’s timestamp, the URL displayed in the address bar will change and you should see an “&lc” included in the link. Anyone opening that specific link will see the video and comment highlighted. Removing the “&lc” and string will simply redirect the user to the original video and the intact comments section.
