Five YouTube Features You Should Be Using Right Now
YouTube can keep you entertained while you are on the go. It is a great way to kill a couple minutes. Here is a list of features you probably are not using, but totally should.
- Double tap to skip ahead. You do not need to scroll through the video’s progress bar to find that particular scene you are looking for. Plus, it can be difficult to get to the right spot in a video with the innate error of touchscreen devices. You want to move to 1:15, but you kept landing on 1:25. There is NO need to worry now because you can just double tap on the video to move forward by 10 seconds. This little-known feature can help get to a specific time frame and spend less time scrolling through the video. If you find that 10 seconds is not working for you, just go to the settings and change the skip time.
- Background play. For the most part, we just use YouTube to search for a song that is stuck in our heads. We do not bother with the video part because we just need to listen to the audio. YouTube users had always wanted to get a background playback option. Finally, Google listened and it exists now. The downside is that it is part of the YouTube Red subscription. (For those who do not know, it is a paid streaming subscription service exclusively for YouTube in selected countries like the US, Australia, NZ, Mexico, and South Korea.)
If you have Red, you can take advantage of this feature. When you are logged in to your Red account, simply minimize the app by hitting the home button of your device when watching a video and the audio will continue playing in the background.
- Limit mobile date usage. Watching YouTube videos can be fun, but it won’t be fun if you are already over the monthly mobile data capacity. Fortunately, you can now play videos and at the same time, consume less data. You just have to open the YouTube app settings and go to the General tab. At the top portion is a toggle to Limit mobile data usage. Turn that setting on, and YouTube will only stream in standard definition, and not HD.
- View in Cardboard. If you are into Virtual Reality (VR), this feature is for you. YouTube already has a lot of 360-degree videos that are viewable on both desktop and mobile devices. All you need is a Google Cardboard. You just have to search for a 360-degree video and tap the cardboard icon in the lower right corner. This works too with other virtual reality headsets like HTC Vive, Samsung VR, LG Steam VR, and many more.
- Download videos. Like the background playback option, downloading YouTube videos is only available on YouTube Red. If you have Red, you can now download videos for offline viewing. In order to download a video, tap the download button , which is under the video title. Then, the application will ask what quality level of the video you wish to download. Beside it, the total size of the video is displayed.