5 YouTube tips and tricks to master video playback

We all love YouTube, the world’s favourite video-streaming platform. With everything from sports highlights and news to DIY repairs and stand-up comedy on offer, it is no surprise YouTube one of the most visited websites in the world. However, while a lot of us frequent YouTube users may simply purchase a Premium subscription and call it a day, there are more ways to improve your YouTube experience.

Here are five simple tricks that will give you better control over YouTube playback on your smartphones, and make your overall experience faster and more intuitive.

Swipe to toggle fullscreen

Yes, everyone uses YouTube in its fullscreen mode. However, did you know there is a quicker way to go fullscreen instead of finding the tiny fullscreen button on the bottom right of the video? Simply swipe up on a video to go full-screen, and swipe-down on the fullscreen video to return to the compact layout. This will work irrespective of your auto-rotate settings.

Change skip duration

The double-tap on either side of the screen to go 10 seconds forward or backwards into the video is a lifesaver, but it can get even better. Head into YouTube Settings > General and you will find the option to set the skip duration to 5 seconds, 30 seconds or even 60 seconds, any of which can now be your new default.

Temporarily play at 2x

Want to skip through a particular portion of the video faster but don’t want to skip the good bits by skipping 10 seconds? We’ve all been there. Thankfully, one of YouTube’s newer features lets you long-press on the screen to temporarily enter 2x speed mode.

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This lets you quickly get across the dreaded ‘sponsored’ bits of videos and when you reach where you want, simply lift your finger to resume normal speed playback.

Turn off playback in feeds

Scrolling through your YouTube feed, you will see videos play the first few seconds right in the thumbnail, to give you an idea of what to expect. However, not everyone may like this approach, especially when you’re on a metered data connection. Such users can simply head into YouTube’s settings to turn off the playback in feeds feature. Now, all you will see until you actually tap on a video, is thumbnails.

Change PiP player size

Whether you’re on iPhones or Android smartphones, YouTube’s Picture-in-Picture (PiP) mode is one of its best features for Premium users. It allows you to enjoy your videos while multitasking with most other apps on your phone. However, don’t forget that you can also change the PiP size. Once you’ve returned to your home screen to use PiP, simply use two fingers to pinch in or out on the video player to increase or decrease its size.

Those are some neat tricks that you can start using immediately, to fly through the YouTube app on your phone and make your playback simpler and quicker.