If viewers tell you the video “jumps ahead by itself” by about ten seconds, the usual cause isn’t a playback fault at all — it’s a touch gesture built into the SmartVideo player. On a phone or tablet, two quick taps on the right third of the picture skip forward 10 seconds. Two quick taps on the left third go back 10 seconds.
It’s easy to set off without meaning to. Tapping the picture once brings the controls up, tapping again hides them, and if both taps land on the same side within about a third of a second, the player reads them as a double-tap and seeks.
How to confirm it
Open one of your videos on a phone, start playback, then double-tap the right side of the picture. If a small round badge with a chevron and +10s flashes for a moment and playback moves ahead ten seconds, that’s what your viewers are hitting. Double-tap the left side and you’ll see -10s. On an Android phone there’s usually a short vibration with it too; iPhones don’t buzz.
A few things rule the gesture out:
- It only works once the video is playing. Before the first play, taps on the picture do nothing but start the video, so nobody can skip ahead from the poster frame.
- Taps on the control bar don’t count. Play/pause, the progress bar, the volume and fullscreen buttons, the big play button, and any link over the video are all excluded, so scrubbing or pausing can’t trigger a skip.
- Scrolling doesn’t count. If the finger travels more than a few pixels between touch down and touch up, the player treats it as a scroll, not a tap.
- A mouse never seeks. On a desktop, a double-click toggles fullscreen — there are no left/right seek zones there. So if the jump is reported on desktop with a mouse, it isn’t this gesture, and it’s worth emailing support.
The full gesture map
On a touchscreen:
- Double-tap the left third — back 10 seconds
- Double-tap the right third — forward 10 seconds
- Double-tap the middle — enter or leave fullscreen
With a mouse:
- Double-click anywhere on the picture — enter or leave fullscreen. To move through the video, use the progress bar.
Telling your viewers
If you run a course, a membership site, or anything else where people watch long videos, the quickest fix is simply to tell them the gesture exists. Someone who knows that a double-tap on the left side rewinds 10 seconds can recover the part they skipped in one motion, instead of hunting on the progress bar for where they were.
Can it be turned off?
There’s no dashboard setting or embed-tag option that switches the double-tap seek off on its own. The gestures only run while the player’s controls are on, so a video embedded without the controls attribute has no double-tap seek — but it also gives viewers no play/pause or progress bar, which usually isn’t what you want for a lecture.
If the gesture is a real problem for your audience — a classroom app where viewers tap the screen constantly, for example — email support@swarmify.com and tell us how your viewers use the player, and we’ll take it from there.
When it really isn’t the gesture
A few other things get described as “the video jumped”:
- It paused and then caught up. A stall on a slow connection shows a loading spinner and resumes at the same spot. Nothing is lost. See What is a rebuffer?
- It restarted somewhere unexpected. Check whether your page or course plugin saves and restores a last-watched position.
- It stopped partway and wouldn’t continue. That’s a different problem — see Will videos playback while they’re being optimized?
If none of those fit, send us the page URL, the video, and the viewer’s device and browser, and we’ll trace that playback session.
Keywords: jumps forward, skips ahead, 10 seconds, double tap, double-tap seek, skip forward, rewind, gesture, +10s badge, mobile player, iPhone, touch controls