YouTube has come a long way from its origins as a place to look at kittens and home videos of people\u2019s dogs. There\u2019s a multimillion dollar industry based around it, a new generation of media stars who got their start on the channel and its connection with Google and its ubiquity, to say nothing of how easy it is to embed, mean it gets a lot of use for business purposes too.<\/p>\n
With that in mind, you\u2019re probably not getting the very best out of your Youtube experience. Here are a few ways to get the normal stuff done faster – and a couple of tricks you probably didn\u2019t even know were possible!<\/p>\n
1: Space Bar<\/p>\n
Most of us know that the space bar is play\/pause on YouTube. If you want to watch something in slow motion, though, hold the space bar down! This is really useful for detailed how-tos.<\/p>\n
2: Jump Around!<\/p>\n
J jumps you back 10 seconds in the video. L jumps you forward 10 seconds. No mouse required. You can also use K as play\/pause, if you\u2019re watching a video entitled \u2018how repair space bar.\u2019<\/p>\n
The arrow keys fast forward and rewind, and the number keys jump to percentage locations in the video: 1 is 10%, 5 50%, 0 the beginning.<\/p>\n
These don\u2019t work in fullscreen mode, by the way.<\/p>\n
3: Lean Back!<\/p>\n
…is the name of an app that allows you to turn YouTube into a keyboard-only experience with a totally new interface that can be conveniently browsed with only the arrow keys and \u2018enter.\u2019 This doesn\u2019t seem to work on Macs, though.<\/p>\n
4: Do What You Feel!<\/p>\n
YouTube has a hidden feature called Moodwall (yes,I\u2019m aware that we\u2019re moving away from tricks that are useful in the enterprise, but I thought you\u2019d want to know). Moodwall lets you select your mood from a sidebar. YouTube then shows you videos appropriate to your mood. If you disagree, double click on the mood you chose, and the videos will all change.<\/p>\n
5: Ride the Snake<\/p>\n
OK, so now we\u2019re moving from \u2018not useful in the enterprise\u2019 to \u2018not useful at all,\u2019 and it\u2019s also not really a secret – it\u2019s even on YouTube\u2019s Wikipedia page. On any video you\u2019re watching, pause it and hold down the left or right arrow key for a few seconds. Then press the up arrow key to start the game, and hey presto! Your computer and YouTube together have created the \u2018snake\u2019 game that made Nokia owners the world over miss public transportation throughout the early 2000s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
YouTube has come a long way from its origins as a place to look at kittens and home videos of people\u2019s dogs. There\u2019s a multimillion dollar industry based around it,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-technology"],"yoast_head":"\n