YouTube users have uncovered a hidden feature that they can’t believe they ever lived without.
Just when you think you know exactly how to get the most out of your smartphone, someone discovers a new feature that changes everything.
And the YouTube app is no different, with plenty of advanced settings to improve your viewing experience.
One particularly useful feature that people are now figuring out is how to watch videos with a 2x playback speed.
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This allows you to skim through a video quicker and is particularly handy when you need to watch something fast and don’t need to pay close attention to all the details.
While it’s not exactly a new feature on the social media platform, many people didn’t realize just how easy it was to access.
In a report by Android Police, it detailed: “I didn't know that setting the playback to 2x speed was this easy until a few days ago. All I have to do is tap and hold anywhere on the video playback screen, and YouTube will start playing at 2x speed.
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“It'll keep playing at that speed until you lift your finger off the playback screen. It also works in Incognito mode.”
Others have taken to social media to share their own thoughts on the feature, with one user writing on Reddit: “Has anyone figured out how to get my 2x speed back yet? I’m on Firefox, and no I don't want to use Chrome because all of my stuff is saved on Firefox. Like 1/10 videos will have the 2x speed there, but then it just goes away once I start to watch a new video.”
This prompted a reply from another who said: “You're supposed to use the slider unfortunately.”
And a third person added: “Or you can press ">" and "<" to control speed. Be a power user and use your keyboard! Btw the slider still has the 2 for me when I open firefox anyway.”
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This discovery means that people are able to skip through boring or sponsored sections of videos to get to the part they want to watch quicker.
Other handy YouTube features
This isn’t the only feature proving to be useful on YouTube as users are also making the most of the Quick Seek function.
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All you have to do is double tap either the left or right side of the screen to skip forward or backward by 10 seconds.
Another feature is Ambient Mode which, once selected will add a subtle backlighting effect that matches the video's colors.
Caption Settings is also useful is a video's speech is hard to understand.