You probably already know a lot about the 18-year-old video platform if you’re one of the estimated 2.5 billion YouTube users, the second-largest social media platform on the planet (behind Facebook’s alleged 2.9 billion users).
You’ve probably heard of (or perhaps subscribed to) YouTube Premium, which costs $8/month and lets you stream live TV from more than 100 broadcast, cable, and regional networks. YouTube TV costs $11.99/month and lets you stream millions of videos without ads before, during, or after each video.
However, there is a lot more to YouTube than just that. There are a lot of “official” things you can do, like using the company’s own shortcuts, as well as unofficial “hacks” that can improve your binge-watching sessions.
Register with YouTube
It’s preferable to join into YouTube (using a Google account), even if it’s not necessary, as any playlist you make will be synced across all devices.
By logging in, you can also contribute your own content, subscribe to channels you enjoy, like and comment on videos, share them on social media, and report or ban those you don’t like.
Download videos from YouTube
You can download videos to watch later if you know you’ll be offline for a while, such as on a long flight where you don’t want to pay for Wi-Fi.
The legitimate way to do this is to subscribe to YouTube Premium, as one of the features of the service is the ability to download videos.
There are a number of websites and apps that let you save YouTube videos to watch later without Google’s approval. In order to access a website where you can download the video, one of the quickest methods is to simply add “pp” after the word “youtube” in a web browser.
Transform a YouTube video into a.gif
Another unofficial trick is to extract any segment of a YouTube video and turn it into an animated.gif.
As you probably already know,.gifs, which are silent and play continuously, are entertaining to share on social media.
Click “YouTube to Gif” on MakeaGif.com. The YouTube video link should now be copied and pasted into the search box. After processing is complete, you can select the start and end times as well as the length, quality, and speed.
Although this tool is free, you must register an account in order to produce a.gif, and unless you upgrade to a Premium account ($11.95/month), you will have a little watermark.
Respect the copyrights of others by only using your own YouTube videos to make.gifs.
share video from a particular location
On a PC or Mac, sharing a YouTube movie at a certain point is simple to do.
The time at which the video is now paused will be displayed in the “Share at” box below the link when you click the share button (such as 1:04).
Choose this time or another time; either way, when the recipient clicks “Play,” it will begin exactly where you desired.
Learn the shortcuts for YouTube.
By learning a few shortcuts, you can accomplish more on a computer while watching YouTube. About 25 of them, but here are a few instances:
Toggle: Play/Pause
Mute/Unmute, M
Left/Right Arrow: Move forward or backward five seconds
and : Accelerate or decelerate playback
Up/Down Arrow: 5% volume increase/decrease
There are other YouTube shortcuts available for mobile devices as well, such as the ability to go 10 seconds forward or back by double-tapping on the left or right side of the video on a phone or tablet.
Before visiting the site, do some research.
When something can be done in one step, why take two?
To watch the same video, use your preferred web browser instead of going to YouTube.com and then using the YouTube search window to find something to watch.
For instance, if you type “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 trailer youtube” into Google Search, Bing, Yahoo!, or DuckDuckGo, the video thumbnail will appear in the search engine’s results, and you may click it to start playing the video right away.
