From entering full screen in portrait view to seeing how many hours you spend every day watching videos, this guide tells you about over thirty handy YouTube tips and tricks to further enhance your viewing experience.
While these tips are for iPhone and iPad users, many of them will also work on an Android phone, computer, or TV.
Play YouTube videos in the background without Premium
If you have subscribed to YouTube Premium, you can play videos in the background as well as in Picture in Picture mode. However, if you haven’t and need to listen to a video song, podcast, or something else in the background, there is an easy trick to follow.
- Access YouTube.com in Safari on your iPhone or iPad and play the video.
- Swipe up to go out of the browser.
- Open Control Center and tap the play button in the Now Playing area. This will force the YouTube video to keep playing in audio-only mode. You can even lock the screen.
Note: If the above tip does not work for you, retry once more. If it still fails, tap the full-screen button after step 1, tap the Picture in Picture button, and then follow steps 2 and 3.
Customize or turn off all YouTube notifications
Notifications from the YouTube app can get out of hand quickly, so it’s best to either turn off all alerts from iOS Settings > Notifications > YouTube > Allow Notifications or you can decide which kinds of alerts to get and which ones to block in the YouTube app.
- Tap You inside the YouTube app and hit the gear icon from the upper right corner to access your settings.
- Select Notifications.
- Choose the kinds of alerts you want to get.
Listen to podcasts at 1.25x
If you listen to podcasts and long-form shows on YouTube, you should explore the option to listen to them at 1.25 times the speed instead of the normal 1x speed. Tap the gear icon on the YouTube player and set the Playback speed to 1.25x.
Slow down the playback
On an alternate note, if you feel a video is very fast or its audio is not easily understandable, you can slow down the playback to 0.75x or less.
Touch and hold at will for 2x playback
You can touch and hold anywhere on the YouTube player screen in both normal and full-screen modes to play the video at 2x speed, as long as you keep holding. This is great if you want to skim through a boring or repetitive part of the video.
Double tap to skip or rewind
You already know that you can go forward and backward by tapping twice on the right and left sides of the YouTube video player. However, what you may not know is that you can customize how many seconds to go forward or back in a single double-tap.
Use video chapters
Several YouTube videos support chapters so you can jump quickly to a particular spot without having to fast forward manually.
Tap once on the video player screen to reveal the on-screen controls. If the video has chapters, it will appear next to the timestamp. Tap it and then select a chapter to jump to it.
Pinch to Zoom
You can put two fingers on the video player and zoom in on the video as needed. This is similar to how you zoom in the Photos app.
Swipe up and down to enter or exit full-screen
In addition to tapping the full-screen button, just swipe up on the player to enter full-screen and swipe down to exit full-screen.
Enter full-screen while holding the phone in portrait mode
When you enter full-screen on YouTube, it automatically rotates the video playback to landscape orientation. However, on countless occasions, I find myself wanting to watch the video in portrait mode (as it’s easy to hold the phone this way) without all the clutter.
To do this, swipe down from anywhere under the video player screen. The video playback will move to the middle portion of the screen, with a black background at the top and bottom. Swipe up to return to normal view.
Minimize the video player
If you swipe down from the video player in portrait mode, it will minimize the playback into a thin strip on the bottom. Now, you can explore the YouTube app while your playback continues.
Lock the screen to avoid accidental taps
Are you handing over your iPhone or iPad with YouTube playback to a kid, or just want to prevent accidental screen touches yourself?
Tap the gear icon on the YouTube video player screen and select Lock screen. The video player will rotate to landscape view and block screen touches.
You can also follow the above tips to play the video on full-screen in portrait mode and then lock the screen without it rotating to landscape view.
Bonus tip: You can also use iOS Guided Access to lock the iPhone or iPad to just one app — YouTube, in this case.
Stop videos from playing when you are browsing the app
You may have noticed that videos auto-play on mute when you’re browsing the app. If you do not like this or want to save cellular data, go to YouTube app settings > General > Playback in feeds and turn it off or set it to Wi-Fi only.
Turn on Picture in Picture
If you have subscribed to YouTube Premium, you can enjoy playback in Picture in Picture. This lets you keep watching the video outside of the YouTube app.
Turn off the color-changing video background
If you don’t like YouTube’s ambient mode, which changes the video background, you can turn it off by tapping the gear icon and selecting Additional settings.
Always have the video fill the entire screen
If you don’t like the black bars on the left and right sides of the YouTube video and always find yourself zooming in to fill the screen, you can go to YouTube app settings > General and turn on Zoom to fill screen. After this, the app will automatically zoom the video to take the entire screen.
Use YouTube in private mode
Imagine you want to watch a few videos that are completely different from your regular taste and don’t want those videos to influence your future YouTube recommendations. In this situation, turn on incognito or private mode in the YouTube app to disable tracking and personalization.
Permanently use Dark Mode just for YouTube
You can go to YouTube app settings > General and set Appearance to Dark theme to have the app look like Spotify with Dark Mode enabled at all times, irrespective of what mode your iPhone is in.
Use the queue feature
Most music streaming apps let you build your Up Next queue. The YouTube app also lets you do this by tapping the three dots icon under a video thumbnail and selecting Play next in queue.
When you’re watching a video on the full screen, swipe up on the player to view related videos. After that, swipe horizontally to see them all.
Read video transcript
YouTube auto-generates a transcript for most videos, and you can see it if you can’t figure out what the audio said or if you want to take notes. To do this, go to the video description section and tap Show transcript.
See likes and replies to your YouTube comments
Tap the notifications bell icon from the top right of the Home tab in the YouTube app to see alerts about likes and replies to the comments you have made on videos.
View all YouTube comments you have ever made
YouTube not only keeps a record of all the comments you have made under the videos, it also lets you see them in a convenient spot.
Always have something to watch offline
If you have subscribed to YouTube Premium, the Smart Downloads feature will automatically save recommended videos for offline viewing without you having to do a thing.
Clear all downloads in one go
If the downloaded videos are taking up too much local space or if you cannot select the video quality as it says ‘Unavailable,’ go to YouTube app settings > Background & downloads > Delete downloads > Delete.
Ask YouTube not to recommend certain videos and channels
If you do not like a video or channel, tap the three dots button under a clip and choose Not interested or Don’t recommend channel.
Have YouTube remind you to take a break
You can set the YouTube app to remind you to pause and take a break if you have been watching videos for too long. Go to the app settings > General and turn on Remind me to take a break. You can also choose to get reminded that it’s bedtime, and you should probably stop watching now!
The YouTube app allows you to effortlessly cut a video into 5 to 60-second chunks and share the link on social media, email, text message, and more. This is handy if you want the person to see only this important part while ignoring the rest of the long video.
To use this feature, play a video inside the app, tap Clip, and give it a title. Now, pick the part you want to share, adjust its length, and hit Share clip. Finally, select a medium to share it.
You can access all these clips by going to the You section of the YouTube app and tapping Your clips.
See your YouTube watch time
Go inside the YouTube app and tap You, followed by Time watched to know how many hours you spend every day watching videos.
Related: How to find out how much time you spend in iPhone & iPad apps
Make YouTube kid-friendly without mature content
If you do not want to see vulgar video recommendations, go to YouTube General settings and turn on Restricted Mode.
If you’re setting the app for your child, we have a comprehensive guide on making YouTube kid-friendly.
Try experimental YouTube features
From time to time, YouTube lets eager users test out features before implementing them for everyone (or discarding them). Go to YouTube app settings and tap Try experimental new features to see what’s available and give it a spin.
You can easily create a sharable YouTube link for a video that starts from a specific time, like 3 minutes 45 seconds.
Pause your YouTube history
If you do not want Google to save what you watch on YouTube, you can easily do so from your account’s Activity controls page.
Check out next: How to watch YouTube videos on your Apple Watch