The space bar on the keyboard that does wonders when you watch YouTube videos Discover these tricks
Although the YouTube player is easy to access, it has a series of shortcuts that are worth taking into account to make our experience more satisfying when we want to play a video. In addition to clicking on the options with the mouse, there are also a series of special keys that perform certain actions in the YouTube player.
In this article, we will talk about one of them, and surprisingly, I discovered it less than I would have liked. Have you ever wondered what happens if you hold down the space bar while playing a video? Well, in this article we will tell you what it does and how it can benefit us while watching a video.
To make it easier to access the player options, YouTube has a series of keyboard shortcuts that many people use while on the platform. Perhaps the most famous of these is the fact that you can pause or resume playback by tapping the space bar. You can also use the arrow keys to advance or rewind the video by about five seconds.
However, the space bar also has another function if we leave it pressed while playing a video on YouTube. This way we can double the speed of the video while pressing the space bar, which can be very useful if we want to fast forward the video without having to skip the part directly.
Despite the simplicity of this little trick, it is something I had not realized before. As you well know, YouTube allows you to adjust the playback speed of videos, so from the settings panel we can play the video at different speeds, depending on whether you want to watch the content faster or slower than the normal playback speed. However, if you want to increase the speed at certain moments, long pressing the space bar will help you achieve this.
Interestingly, this is not the only way to increase the video playback speed without having to go into the player settings. If we hold down the left mouse button in any area of the video while it is playing, we will also double the speed while holding the button.
This last trick could be improved if YouTube allowed us to double the speed if we held the button down somewhere in the right half of the video and then go back to the same speed if we left it pressed somewhere in the left half. However, for now, it doesn't matter which area of the video you hold down, because the result will be the same.
YouTube Player has a few tricks worth knowing and Google updates it from time to time to include some new features. Over the years it has evolved a lot, moving to a more streamlined and functional design. If you’ve noticed this little trick recently, know that you’re not alone.