Probably the best form of consumable content that we have right now is video. And the station that makes this form of content available at a grand scale is YouTube. These YouTube hacks are something that everyone who actively uses YouTube must be aware of.
YouTube Hacks : Modifying URL’s
These YouTube Hacks are as easy as modifying the inherent URL’s that YouTube provides to help you get more out of the platform.
Modifying URL’s is one of the easiest ways to get YouTube do things for you.
Some of these things you may not even know you needed.
So let’s get started.
1.Looping A Video Infinitely
Most of us use YouTube to listen to music.
I mean yes, we have many apps that can stream just audio but many a times when new music videos are out we prefer seeing it in video form.
Plus the recommendations that we receive thereof keeps us in tune with the latest additions.
So the next time you are hooked on a new music video you can actually keep it on repeat by appending “repeater” in the YouTube URL like so.
Modify the URL like so.
2. Making a GIF From A Video
We live in the world of memes.
Whatever happens in the world meme engineers are always looking for a potential meme in the event.
Politics, religion, movies you name it.
Similarly, if you find something on YouTube which is meme worthy, this is what you should do.
Similar to the previous point append “gif” to the main URL but this time in the beginning of the link like so.
Modify the URL to
What this will do is take you to gifs.com where you can add various effects and crop the segment you want as the gif.
Once done you can then directly share the meme with the world and memefy it even more.
3. YouTube Hacks To Bypass Age Restriction
Many a times a movie, trailer and certain other “stuff” is flagged as containing mature content.
And maybe you are casually browsing YouTube from a different computer and don’t want to login.
In that case you can actually use this hack to bypass the sign in and watch the video directly.
Here is how you do it.
Append “gen” in the beginning of the link like this.
Once done the video will open in a different tab that features no age restriction.
4. Extract Thumbnail Of Any Video
I used this method a couple of times because I liked the color combination of those thumbnails and wanted to decode them.
And I feel maybe you can also find some use of this trick.
In order to view a high quality thumbnail of any video that you like all you need to do is,
- Grab the video ID of the video that you are interested in
Video ID is the gibberish that you see after v= at the end of the YouTube video.
2. Put the video ID into this URL (no square brackets)
img.youtube.com/vi/[VideoID]/maxresdefault.jpg And that’s it.
5. YouTube Mashup
Well, I don’t know whether I should call this a YouTube hack.
Because this is not done on YouTube itself but on a different website.
But yeah you can actually make a mashup of your favorite videos from YouTube.
Let your creativity unleash here.
Add some funny background over the mix of two clips and what not.
Your imagination is going to be your limit.
YouTube Hacks : Creating Timestamped links
It’s a very simple element to YouTube but is easily missed by a lot of people.
You can actually create a link that starts a YouTube video from a specific time stamp.
All you need to do when sharing a video is either mention from where you want to start a video.
Or just pause the video from where you want your viewers to see from and click on the checkbox as shown.
Just for your understanding I am mentioning a video from my channel with a timestamp.
In this video, I kind of reacted to the whole freedom of speech stuff that Zucky mentioned at Georgetown University.
Felt pretty good while making it.
Give it a watch if you have some spare time.
Play YouTube Videos In The Background On Mobile Devices
This is a great one.
And I know how you have felt almost handicapped when the audio or podcast that you are listening to stops with you stopping the YouTube app or website.
Well don’t worry there is actually a hack for it.
Open google chrome or Firefox and go to youtube.com.
Once there click on browser options (the three buttons on the top right) and check request desktop site.
That’s it play your video or podcast and hit the home button.
Your video will keep playing in the background.
Cool isn’t it. 😉
YouTube Kids
Got Kids ?. There, there !!.
Let me try and make things simple for you.
I know once they grab your phone, you don’t know what to do.
It’s so funny when I was a kid when school started my mom used to take my SNES and lock it in a cupboard or something.
And I never argued for some reason. It was like a ritual.
When school starts SNES goes, when school ends SNES comes.
Parents today don’t have that privilege, I can understand that.
But what you can do though is subject your kids to YouTube kids rather than main YouTube platform.
It’s a filtered version of YouTube that is created to contain educational content catered for kids.
You can even customize whether the app will have a search bar on the top or not.
There is also an option to set the timer to limit how much time your kid spends on the app which is a very cool feature to control the content intake and over exposure to the mobile screen.
YouTube Copyright Puppets
It’s not actually a hack or anything but something I found really interesting.
With all the copyright issues that creators face YouTube found a funny way of making everyone aware of its copyright rules and policies using puppets.
Check it out !!.
YouTube’s Massive Audio Library
Many a times I see content creators looking for royalty free music for their content.
YouTube has it’s own library of audio that you can use for absolutely free for your content.
You can use this audio in your content and not worry about those copyright puppets turning from cute to scary.
You can either append this audio directly from the creator studio or conveniently download the audio and apply them in a software like adobe premiere pro.
Alright my babies, that was it as far as YouTube Hacks go.
By no means are these the only YouTube hacks or tips out there, but these are indeed very important if you use YouTube on a daily basis.
If you have some other YouTube hacks, tips or tricks that you use regularly feel free to share them on in the comment section and I may even include them in the post if it benefits the masses.
Take great care of yourselves and I will see you in the next one :).
Tada!.
