Watching a timelapse

While a timelapse plays, the bar along the top shows whose timelapse it is and the real date and time of the blocks on screen. The controls sit along the bottom.

The timeline

The long bar shows how far through you are, as blocks shown out of the total. Drag it to jump to any moment; the timelapse pauses there.

Button	What it does
Restart	Back to the start, and plays.
Play / Pause	Plays or pauses. At the end it becomes Replay.
Length	How long the whole timelapse takes: 15 s, 30 s, 1, 2, 5 or 10 min.
Showing	Showing: everyone, or one builder at a time. See one builder’s work.
+ Milestone	Names the moment you’re at. See milestones.

Milestones show as small marks on the timeline, and their names appear in the middle of the screen as the timelapse reaches them.

Ghost builders

The people who built the area appear in the timelapse as ghosts: player models with their names above their heads, and their skins if they’re on the server. They move around the build the way they did while building, holding and swinging the blocks they place. When someone wasn’t building, their ghost isn’t there.

Ghosts only exist on your screen and disappear when you leave. On a server with recordBuilders turned off, blocks still rebuild as normal, without ghosts.

One builder’s work

Click Showing to go through the builders one at a time. With one picked, only their blocks appear, on top of how the area was before, and only their ghost is shown. Changes nobody made by hand, such as those from pistons, machines or explosions nobody lit, are listed as Other. Changing it starts the timelapse again.

The camera

Button	What it does
Camera	Switches between Camera: orbit, Camera: follow builder, Camera: still and Camera: you.
Spin	How fast the orbit goes round: 4, 8, 15 or 30 degrees a second, or off.
Closer / Further	Moves the camera in or out.
Higher / Lower	Raises or lowers the camera.

• Orbit circles the build like a film shot. It starts on the side you were standing on, at a distance that fits the whole area.
• Follow builder is a steady, drone-style shot of one ghost builder. It keeps the same direction the whole time (it never turns when they look around) and glides along behind them at an easy pace, staying with the same builder while they’re working. With one builder picked under Showing, it follows them.
• Still holds the camera where it is.
• You goes back to your own view, so you can look around from where you’re standing.

Export a video

Press Export video on the controls (it’s yours to export when you started the timelapse), then My export settings…. The export settings open: pick the size (4K, vertical for phones and so on), frame rate and sound, then press Export video. The timelapse is filmed from the start with the camera as you’ve set it, at the length you picked, perfectly smooth, with a couple of seconds on the finished build at the end. Videos are saved in .minecraft/hindsight/exports/.

Make a video in one click

Press Export video on the controls and pick Make a video: widescreen (1920 × 1080) or Make a video: vertical (1080 × 1920, for Shorts, TikTok and Reels). Hindsight films the whole build in 30 seconds with a slow orbit (pulled back a little for vertical video, which shows less from side to side), the date of what’s being built in the corner and a thin progress line along the bottom, plus two seconds on the finished build. Your export settings, timelapse length and camera are left as they were.

The date and progress line can go into any timelapse export: it’s Timelapse date in the export settings.

Visuals

Visuals on the camera row hides name tags, players, mobs or particles, and holds the time of day or the weather, for a cleaner shot. Block effects (on by default) gives each block a puff of dust and its own sound as it goes in; turn it off for a silent rebuild. They reset when the timelapse ends. See visuals.

The controls hide themselves

After about three seconds without moving the mouse, the controls fade away and leave a thin progress line along the bottom, with the milestone marks on it. That’s handy for screenshots, videos and streams. Move the mouse and they come back. They stay up while the timelapse is paused.

Watching together

Set Watch: everyone nearby before pressing Start, and every player around the area sees the timelapse too.

• Who sees it: players with Hindsight within 64 blocks of the area (servers can change this). Chat tells you how many.
• In sync: when you pause, drag the timeline, change the length or pick a builder, everyone’s timelapse follows.
• Their own camera: each viewer has the camera buttons and moves their own camera.
• Leaving: viewers can press Leave or Esc at any time. When you exit, it ends for everyone.

If you’d rather not be pulled into other people’s timelapses, open config/hindsight-client.properties in your game folder and set:

acceptShared=false

Shared timelapses are then quietly declined. Your own still work as normal. Server owners can turn sharing off, limit it to operators or change the distance; see servers.

Leaving

Press Exit or Esc. The real blocks come back straight away, and so do your view and your HUD.

If someone changes a block in the area while you’re watching, you’ll see that change when you leave, not during the timelapse.