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# TechKnowHow
These features will help you get a little bit more out of YouTube
Sure it’s ten years old, but chances are there’s a few bits and pieces that may have slipped past the radar.
YOUTUBE HAS COME a long way since it launched in 2005.
Sure, it’s ten years old, but chances are there are a few bit and pieces that might have slipped past you between then and now. Here are a few tips that might just improve your experience.
Speed up your video
This is handy if you’re watching a video with heavy dialogue as it keeps things moving along nicely. Where you can choose the quality of a video, you can also adjust the speed so things can go a little bit faster, or if you need a slow-mo version of what you’re watching.
Alternatively, you could just hold down the spacebar, but that can become annoying very quickly.
Skip video segments using number keys
Instead of clicking on the video ticker, you can use the 1 to 9 keys to skip segments of the video you’re watching. All videos are broken up into segments so if you were watching a 1:40 video, pressing 0 will bring you to the start, pressing the 1 key will bring you to 10 second, pressing 2 to 20 seconds and so on.
It’s not exact, but it’s useful when you don’t want to search too hard for a specific section.
Listen to music without visiting the site
We’ve mentioned Streamus before, but it’s worth bringing up again if you regularly listen to music on the site. It’s a chrome extension that only plays the audio of a video so you don’t have to watch it. Useful for playing music and ensuring it’s not lost within hundreds of open tabs.
Choose lower quality videos
It can be annoying when you’re on a slow connection, yet YouTube insists on playing a video at 720p. To change this, go into settings (found by clicking your name at the top right-hand corner), select playback from the side-menu and it will be the first option presented to you.
Repeat videos
Should you require it, you can set up a video so it repeats itself when it finishes. In the URL, type ‘repeat’ after YouTube and it will bring you to Listen on Repeat.
Turn a video into a GIF
YouTube were testing out its own GIF making tool before, but until that arrives, you’ll have to rely on a third-party site. There are a few to choose from, but one we like is GifLike which allows you to turn a clip into a GIF that can be 15 seconds long.
It also allows you to enter in text as well so you can create a true masterpiece.
Download videos for offline viewing
This mightn’t be a tip per se but if you’re willing to try something out, you should look at YouTube Music Key, a service which arrived last year. It’s currently in beta and is sign up only, but as well as allowing you listen to YouTube’s vast music collection outside the app, it allows you to download videos for viewing offline.
The first six months are free so it’s worth signing up and trying it out, You never know, you may be presently surprised.
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