Remember the days when we talked about whether YouTube will take over TV? Well, that’s past and it’s the right time you start using this platform for all sorts of entertainment. Despite the popularity, though, many people don’t know some of the coolest features YouTube offers. Some of these require the use of extensions while others are in-built. Anyway, let’s have a look at some of the lesser-known YouTube features that would help you enjoy YouTube better.
#1 YouTube Has Keyboard Shortcuts
You don’t always need your mouse to control YouTube playback. It has some inbuilt keyboard shortcuts — which are pretty handy. We have listed some of the most useful keyboard shortcuts. The next time you are having food and want to pause the video quickly, try some of them.
- Press ‘k’ to pause and resume the video
- Press ‘j’ and ‘k’ respectively to seek the video backward or forward by 10 seconds
- Press numbers 1 to 9 to move to the corresponding percentage of a video. If you press 1, you’ll go to 10% duration of the video.
- Press ‘m’ to mute the video playback
Trust us, these keyboard shortcuts will surely come in handy and will save a lot of time. It works better if you have a portable external keyboard.
#2 YouTube Has a Dark Mode
It was recently that YouTube introduced one of the most anticipated features. You can now enable its Dark Mode, which doesn’t strain your eyes at night. It turns the complete interface to black and the video player and thumbnails will be the only exception.
You can enable this mode by going to Account settings and enabling the Dark Mode. It’s a matter of a single click. Sadly enough, this feature is available only on the web. In Mobile, the Dark Mode is unavailable and you’ll have to use third-party apps like YouTube Vance.
Still, if you spend a lot of time watching YouTube on your PC, count this in.
#3 You Can Share a YouTube Video to Start At a Specific Point
Sometimes, you have to share big videos to friends. But, you don’t want them to watch the entire video, but the main points only. In that case, YouTube has a handy feature for you. It lets you share a YouTube URL that starts the video at a particular point.
The best part is, this is an in-built feature and quite easy to use. Here’s how it works: you can open YouTube video and seek to the portion where you want it to start. Now, right click on the player and select the option named ‘Copy Video URL at current time’.
This will give you a cool-looking video that you can share. Whenever the other person opens the video, it’d skip to the mentioned area.
#4 YouTube Offers Free Sound Effects and Songs
This is one of the best YouTube features that most people don’t know. In fact, if you are trying to boost your YouTube video views, you should consider adding some background music and sound effects. And, in case if you cannot find any copy-left content, YouTube has got you covered.
YouTube offers an open collection of music tracks and sound effects that you can listen to and download for free. The collection is pretty huge and consists of content from various genres and categories. If you are one digital marketer who creates videos often, YouTube repository will be your goldmine for sure.
#5 You Can Playback Videos in Loop
Now, this is a feature not everyone wants. But, for me, this one helps me watch/listen to the same video — again and again. I mostly use this for music tracks, but the feature works almost everywhere too. Using this feature, you can set a video on loop.
To do that, right click on the Player interface and toggle the option named Loop. Now, when one playback is over, it will start again. Don’t worry, the player will not consume your data again. The last time I did it, it was Remember Me from Coco.
However, we don’t recommend using this feature a lot, as it can mess with the cache. If your browser cache is filled, you may face problems like YouTube black screen. In case you already have that, try clearing cache once or twice, by the way.
#6 YouTube Can Show You Captions
Not many people know this, but it’s one of the best YouTube features. It’s because not all uploaders include a subtitle for their videos, and sometimes, it’s so hard to understand. In that case, you can enable Captions from the player.
Now, there are two options. If the uploader has made a subtitle, it will be shown. If there is no subtitle, you can enjoy the auto-generated subtitles from YouTube. Guess what? This feature works for not just English, but other languages as well.
Wrapping Up
Well, these are some of the YouTube features that most people don’t know. But, as you can guess, they can be quite useful in the long run. For instance, you should consider the keyboard shortcut part very well, and you can save a lot of time. By the way, do you know any lesser-known YouTube features? Drop some in the comments section.
Mahesh Dabade is a Computer Engineer by education and a technology enthusiast by passion. He has a stint of experience in Blogging and SEO and loves to write his heart out. He keeps a constant lookout for Tips and Tricks which he believes, enables him to multitask better. Apart from the mystique of science and technology, it is the world of cricket and politics that intrigues him.