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DEMO: YouTube Shortcuts

A practical reference to YouTube's keyboard shortcuts, covering playback control, speed adjustment, navigation, captions, and search.

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About this video

YouTube's built-in keyboard shortcuts give viewers precise control over video playback without relying on on-screen controls. The spacebar and K key both toggle play and pause, while the J and L keys jump 10 seconds backward or forward. For finer navigation, the left and right arrow keys move 5 seconds at a time, and the period and comma keys advance or rewind the video one frame at a time — useful for examining fast-moving or detailed on-screen content. The Home and End keys jump directly to the beginning or end of a video, and the number keys 0 through 9 skip to corresponding 10-percent intervals throughout the timeline. Playback speed can be adjusted on the fly using the greater-than and less-than keys, allowing viewers to slow down complex material or accelerate through familiar content. The M key mutes and unmutes audio, F toggles full-screen mode, and Escape exits it. Closed captions can be toggled with the C key, and pressing the forward slash key opens the YouTube search bar directly. For playlist navigation, Shift+N and Shift+P move to the next or previous video. Together, these shortcuts significantly streamline the viewing experience and support more efficient learning when working through technical video content.

What you'll learn

What's covered

YouTube Keyboard Shortcuts

Key terms

Keyboard Shortcut
A combination of one or more keys pressed simultaneously to perform a function or command quickly without using a mouse or menu.
Playback
The act of playing, pausing, or controlling the progress of a video or audio file.
Closed Captioning
CC
On-screen text that displays the spoken audio of a video, activated in YouTube by pressing the C key.
Full Screen Mode
A display setting that expands video playback to fill the entire screen, toggled in YouTube by pressing the F key.
Playback Speed
The rate at which a video plays relative to its normal speed, adjustable in YouTube using the greater-than and less-than keys.

Topics

Youtube Keyboard Shortcuts Video Playback Productivity Tools Web Applications

Transcript

I've got one of my videos up here, and let's go over some of the controls of this. First of all, I've got the button here that I can pause or play, so I can pause it or play it. Then I've got the next video, which, if you're watching one of my playlists, will play the next video in the playlist; or if it's just YouTube showing you the different videos up next over here, then it will play whatever's up next.

Keyboard controls

The other way I can control this is with the space bar. I can hit the space bar to pause and go, and so that's a way that I can control it. In fact, I can do a lot with my keyboard. If I hover over this button right here it says play, K, so I can hit the K button to play and pause as well. And there's other shortcuts as well. I've got my media buttons up here, and I can hit play and pause with my media buttons, and then it's got the skip forward and skip back tracks as well.

We've also can go to the beginning of this video by hitting the home button, or I could go to the end of the video by hitting the end button. We could go back and forth through this video as we're going by hitting the arrow keys, and so if I hit the arrow right key it'll jump forward 5 seconds, and if I hit the back key it will jump back 5 seconds, so I can jump back and forth through this. The J and L key will do the same thing, except it'll jump 10 seconds, so if I want to jump a little bit faster I can use the J and L key.

Speed, volume and position

If I want to speed up or slow down I can hit the greater than or less than key, and so there's the two times speed. This is a great one: if you feel like I'm talking too slow you can speed things up, or if you feel like I'm talking too fast then you can slow things down. It's a great way to go through the material and try to soak it in at the rate that's best for you.

As I'm playing, I can use the M key to mute and unmute. Zero would go to the beginning of this, so essentially 0% into the video; one would be 10% into the video, two would be 20%, and so on and so forth; and then the nine would jump towards the 90% of the video.

Full screen, captions and search

If I want to see this in full screen I can hit the F and it would open it up in full screen, or if I want to escape out of this then I can hit the escape to escape out of it. If you want some sort of closed captioning you can hit the C to bring up the closed captioning.

To go frame by frame you can hit the period to go frame by frame forward, or the comma to go backwards. So if you're watching something and you really want to see what it is that's coming up on the screen, then you can use those forward and backwards for that.

And then if you're searching for something specific you can hit the forward slash and then the search bar would come up. Let's say I want to look up TCP header and see about a TCP header and what it looks like; so that is the search bar there that you could use. And then if you want to skip between videos you can use the shift N and shift P in order to jump between different videos.

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