15 Best YouTube Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows and Mac

YouTube, Google’s streaming service, is gaining popularity every day. The service is available on phone, laptop, smart TV, and the web. While YouTube is popular on mobile, it is best enjoyed on the web. You can enjoy the big screen and use keyboard shortcuts to navigate the app.

The YouTube Web provides numerous keyboard shortcuts for a seamless YouTube experience. These shortcuts allow you to effortlessly adjust volume, mute videos, restart playback, modify subtitle font, control playback speed, and more. Below, we will outline the top 15 YouTube keyboard shortcuts for both Windows and Mac users. Let’s begin.

1. Play/Pause Video

Most users are familiar with the Spacebar shortcut to play or pause a video. However, this shortcut requires the player to be focused.

Instead, you can use the K key on the keyboard to play or pause the video without needing to focus on the player.

This feature is handy and useful during YouTube video playback. You can quickly adjust the volume by 5% using the up-arrow key to turn it up, and the down-arrow key to turn it down.

3. Mute/Unmute Volume

YouTube provides keyboard shortcuts for all player controls. To mute or unmute a video, use the M key.

4. Move Backward/Forward 5 Seconds

Getting bored with unnecessary sponsored ads between videos? Use the 5 seconds forward/backward video by clicking the right and left arrow.

To skip ahead in a YouTube video, press the L key on your keyboard. To go back 10 seconds, use the J key.

6. Restart the Video

At any point in the video, you can restart by tapping the 0 key on the keyboard. The good news is, it doesn’t require the video to be in focus.

7. Skip to End

Don’t want to watch the whole video? Skip to the end using the End key on the keyboard.

Everyone should remember this keyboard shortcut. Use the number 1 to 9 to quickly jump to the respective percentage of the video.

9. Enter or Exit the Full Screen

Using the F key on the keyboard, users can enable or disable full screen in YouTube videos.

10. Move to Next/Previous Video

If you watch YouTube videos in a playlist, a few keyboard shortcuts can help you navigate between videos. Use Ctrl + right/left arrow on Windows or Command + right/left arrow on Mac to move to the next or previous video in the playlist.

YouTube offers a captions tool to generate subtitles. Use the C key to turn on or off the captions.

12. Increase or Decrease CC Fonts

When Closed Captions are on, you can use the + key to increase font size and the – key to decrease it.

13. Change the Closed Caption Background Color

YouTube lets you change the Closed Caption background color. When the CC is on, press the B key to change the CC background color in the YouTube video.

YouTube allows you to change the video playback speed. Use the > key to speed up and the < key to slow down.

15. Control YouTube Player Functions

You can control most of YouTube player functions with the keyboard shortcuts mentioned above. However, they can’t control everything, like toggling theater mode or controlling options in the Player Settings.

To access these options, use the Tab key to navigate and then use Enter and Arrow keys to control them.

Use Chrome Extensions to Create Keyboard Shortcuts

There’s a Chrome extension for everything. You can create and add keyboard shortcuts to your Chrome browser using Custom Hotkeys. This also works on other Chromium-powered browsers like Edge and Brave.

To create a keyboard shortcut for YouTube, install the Custom Hotkeys extension and open the Options menu by clicking on the extension icon. From there, you can add a new shortcut by clicking the plus icon at the bottom of the screen.

Enter the keyboard shortcut you will use, the URL of the website, and the jQuery selector to simulate a button click. Paid extensions like Shortkeys can also create custom keyboard shortcuts for YouTube.

Use YouTube Like a Pro

YouTube is fun and productive with the mentioned keyboard shortcuts. Most of the time, default shortcuts are sufficient, but if you need more functionality, use Chrome extensions to create custom shortcuts.

Next up: Want to uninstall Chrome apps and extensions on Windows and Mac? Read the post below.