Wednesday, February 6, 2013

How to change the playback speed of a YouTube video



Often when I'm watching a YouTube video the speaker is talking much slower than I can listen. For some videos, if you have joined the html5 beta, there is an option available under the settings menu to change playback speed to .5x, .75x, 1.5x or 2x but most videos lack this option. Here is a way to change the playback speed of any video to whatever you like.

First you have to go here and opt into the YouTube HTML5 beta.

Then, while watching the video, press ctrl + shift + j   (command + option + j on a Mac), this will open the developer tools console which should look something like what you see below.

The Developer Tools Console


Paste the following text into the console and hit enter: document.getElementsByTagName("video")[0].playbackRate = 1.4

This will change the playback speed to 1.4x.

To achieve a playback speed other than 1.4x just change the last number in the string to 1.6x or .25x or whatever you like.

Note: If there are loading errors on the page you may get a bar that pops up at the bottom of the screen instead of the developer tools console. Closing the bar and trying it again should fix this problem.

10 comments:

  1. thanks this is very useful to me.

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  2. Thank you! for providing such a very neat trick, i hope to use this for my next project..Youtube Support

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  3. it works but anything under 0.5 speed wont work.... why is that?

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    1. I am not sure, lower than .5 works for me. Though sound will not work below .5x or above 4x, what OS are you using?

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  4. When I click "Here" there is no "HTML5 beta" option, only HTML, which I have chosen before, and the default shown is "HTML5." When I go to a Youtube video, and hit Ctl Shift J, nothing happens. Under setting for the video, and only have a few speed options, with the slower speed options being .25 and .50, but I want something like .75 or .90 to slow Spanish videos down so I can understand them as I am studying Spanish. Any idea on what's happening? Thanks.

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  5. On Explorer 11, when I enter press ctrl + shift + j, nothing happens, i.e., the developer tool counsel does not open - nothing opens.

    But on Google Chrome, when I press ctrl + shift + j , the developer tool counsel tool indeed opens, and I enter the speed I want, and it works great. (I am using it to learn Spanish by slowing the speed of Spanish language videos down to 0.75 to 0.95 of the normal speed.

    Have you seen this same problem I'm having with Explore 11? Thank you.

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    Replies
    1. I don't believe it will work with IE11 (Do you mean Edge?) stick with Chrome.

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    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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