The Six Best YouTube URL Tricks

YouTube is already one of the best video services online and there are plenty of tricks to make it work for you. Some of the best ones, though, can be done purely from the URL bar.

Repeat All or Part of a Video

We all have that one song that we just can’t hear enough of. If you need to playback a video automatically, you can add the word “repeater” after “youtube” in the URL to open it in a site that will play it back as often as you let it. You can also set it to play back just part of the video.

Download Any Video

As any video production student knows, there are plenty of reasons to download a video that don’t involve copyright infringement for fun and profit. If you want to get a local copy of a YouTube video, pwnyoutube.com can help. Just add “pwn” to the URL before “youtube” and you’ll be given multiple options for download formats.

Bypass Regional Restrictions

Licensing for videos is complicated enough already. If you’re looking to get to a video that has some form of restriction on it, change the format of the video link from this:

To this:

The downside is the video will play filling the entire window. The upside is it will play.

Jump to a Specific Time

If you need to point someone to a certain portion of a video, you can always right click on the player and select “Copy video URL at current time.” However, if you need to be especially specific, you can modify the end variable that follows “t=X” where X is the number of seconds into the video that you want the player to start at.

Disable Related Videos

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes the related videos that are shown at the end of a video can be unsavory. Or, perhaps you just find them irritating. If you want to disable the array of options that show up when the clip’s done playing, add the following to the end of the URL in the embed code:

&rel=0

Note that this doesn’t seem to work on regular links. Just embed codes.

Skip to the Good Parts With the Wadsworth Constant

Just how much of your time on YouTube is wasted watching the boring parts of a video while waiting for the main event to begin? If you believe Wadsworth, the answer is about 30%. While it started as a joke, Google took it seriously enough to add the feature to YouTube itself. If you want to skip the unimportant intros, just add the following to the end of the URL:

&wadsworth=1

Of course, keep in mind with many of these tricks, things can sometimes change. Most of these aren’t official Google features, so they could disappear of function differently over time. In general, though, there are always ways to accomplish nearly everything on this list, whether it’s through Google or third-party services.

The Six Best YouTube URL Tricks