Which interactive YouTube feature was discontinued on January 15, 2019?

The interactive YouTube feature discontinued on January 15, 2019, was annotations.

Annotations were clickable overlays that creators could place on videos as text boxes, speech bubbles, spotlights, or links. YouTube introduced them in 2008, and they became a foundation for early interactive-video experiments, including branching stories, games, quizzes, and choose-your-own-adventure formats.

The feature was phased out because annotations worked poorly on mobile devices and were sometimes abused. YouTube stopped allowing creators to edit them in 2017, then removed existing annotations entirely on January 15, 2019. Their disappearance left some older videos with broken interactive instructions or missing links.

End screens and cards became the principal replacements. Unlike annotations, these tools were designed for cross-platform use and could direct viewers toward another video, playlist, channel, or approved link. Captions, playlists, and Premieres are separate YouTube features and were not the interactive overlay system retired on that date.