Get To Know These Easy-To-Use YouTube Video Keyboard Shortcuts

Many online video fans have no idea they can control YouTube video playback directly from their keyboards. That’s why technology columnist David Pogue over at Yahoo! Tech put together a short tutorial on some of the top YouTube keyboard shortcuts.

Computer-savvy YouTube viewers already know that pressing the spacebar will pause a video and then continue playback once tapped again. However, if for some reason your spacebar is broken or isn’t working, you can also press the K key to achieve the same function.

Other keys allow you to control what section of the video you’re watching. The Home key takes you all the way back to the beginning of a video, while End will take you to that titular destination. You can use the J key to jump back 10 seconds and the L key to jump forward 10. Pogue notes these keys are especially useful if you missed what was just said or you want to skip a particularly boring section of a video. And using M will let you mute and unmute the video’s sound.

If you’d like to navigate through a YouTube using more specific, targeted functions, start using the arrow keys. The left and right arrows allow you to rewind and fast forward respectively, so you can find exactly the moment in the video you’re looking for. Additionally, you can use the number keys (0, 1, 2, 3, etc.) to jump to the corresponding percentage into the video’s length. For example, the 0 key is the beginning of a video, the 1 key equals 10% of the way through a video, and 2 is 20%; this function works for all number keys through 9.

Pogue notes these keyboard shortcuts don’t work on YouTube videos which are in full-screen mode, except for the M key for muting and the spacebar for pausing. However, I tested the shortcuts in both regular and theater modes, and they worked just fine.

Here’s a video tutorial from Pogue on all the aforementioned functionality. Set your mouse aside and let your keyboard take care of all your in-video sound and navigation needs.