8 useful YouTube hacks

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

How to download a video? How do I turn off pop-up ads while watching videos? How to share only the fragment you want? Lifehacker shares these and other useful YouTube secrets.

1. Turn off pop-up notifications

When you play YouTube videos, YouTube creators can show you pop-up ads like their website URL or links to other videos. This can often interfere with viewing and even annoying, especially if the author abuses this feature. But these ads can be easily disabled.

Click on your photo in the upper right corner of YouTube and select Preferences. When the new page opens, in the left pane, click Play. Then uncheck the box next to Show annotations and notifications in video.

2. Choose the playback speed

On YouTube, you can find educational videos on almost any topic, from nuclear physics to flooring. And many of them are convenient to watch in slow motion so as not to miss the details. The opposite is also possible, when you need to view the video in accelerated mode.

To adjust the playback tempo, click on the gear in the YouTube player, select "Speed" and then the appropriate value.

3. Disable autoplay

By default, after one video ends, YouTube automatically plays the next one. You can easily disable this feature if you want. To do this, in the upper right corner there is an "Autoplay" switch.

In addition, the service automatically plays the video as soon as you open its page. This YouTube behavior cannot be changed using standard tools. But you can use the Enhancer for YouTube extension. Check it and check the boxes next to the items "Automatically pause videos open in background tabs" and "Also pause videos open in the active tab" in the settings.

YouTube Enhancer offers other options, including auto-resolution and interface color settings. Alternatively, you can try another cross-browser extension - Magic Actions for YouTube. It also allows you to block autoplay and has even more advanced features. But Magic Actions is more complicated and a beginner can get confused in the numerous settings of the extension.

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4. View and download text transcripts

Some YouTube videos are valuable not only for their video sequence, but also for their subtitles. You may want to keep a short summary of a lecture, educational film, or educational program. Use the DownSub service for this, which can not only download subtitles, but also translate them immediately.

You can also watch transcript subtitles right in the YouTube interface. To do this, you just need to click on three dots under the video and select "View video transcript".

5. Share links to the desired fragment

If the video itself is quite long, and you want to show only a small excerpt from it, then this is quite simple. Rewind the video to the desired point, right-click on the image and choose Copy Time-Based Video URL. You can send this link to your friends, and they will start watching from this very moment.

There are services in which you can choose not only the beginning, but also the ending of the fragment that you want to share. For example - Youtube Cutter. Just insert a link to the video in it, select the desired passage using the sliders, specify a title and click on the trim button. The service will generate a link to the created fragment for you.

6. Loop playback

Sometimes you want to loop the playback of a music video or other video in order to watch it several times in a row. To do this, just right-click on the video and select the "Repeat" option.

7. Download videos

There are dozens of different ways to download YouTube videos. Let's consider one of the simplest ones. All you need to do is insert ss into the address of the page with the video right before the word youtube, and you will be instantly redirected to the download page.

8. Extract audio

Among other things, YouTube is famous for its huge library of music videos. And you can extract audio track from any clip. To do this, open the page with the video you are interested in and replace the word youtube with ytbmp3 in its address. The YouTubeMP3 Converter service page will open, where you can download a song from YouTube.

If you want to extract audio from the entire playlist, just add a link to this playlist to the service.