10 YouTube Tips and Shortcuts to Make You Look Like a Pro

4. Find related videos

On a mobile device, you can quickly view a row of suggested videos by tapping the screen while you're watching full screen. Some thumbnail images will pop up, each of which YouTube suggests based on your viewing history.

When watching on desktop, suggested videos are listed along the right side of the screen.

5. Go ‘Incognito'

If you want to look up something weird, glance at something at random or just browse YouTube without affecting your personalized recommendations, Incognito mode behaves as if you aren't signed into your account. This means any of your activity, such as searches, subscriptions or videos watched, won't influence your YouTube experience, and it won't affect the recommendations you get.

To enable Incognito mode, tap your profile picture in the top right of the screen and select Turn on Incognito.

6. Use a keyboard shortcut

These computer keyboard shortcuts will help you do more in less time. While watching a video:

• J will rewind 10 seconds.
• L will fast-forward 10 seconds.
• M will mute and unmute the video.
• Spacebar or K will pause or play the video.

Pro tip: Use the numbered keys to quickly skip to a part of the video. For example, pressing 2 will take you 20 percent into the video, pressing 7 will take you to 70 percent into the video, and pressing 0 will restart the video.

7. Search for something quickly

To find something you want, you know you can tap or click the search window and type in some keywords, but here are tips for a more accurate search:

• Add quotation marks to search for a specific term. For instance, if you search for tie-dye masks without quotations, the search engine will look for any of those three words, in any order. You will get better results with “tie-dye masks."

• Add a plus or minus sign to include or omit results. For example, type “recipes -chicken” if you don't want to see any chicken recipes. Or type “best games -nintendo” to omit games for Nintendo platforms.

• Add “allintitle” in the search box before the keywords to make sure the results will include all the keywords you searched for in the title.

• Add “HD” to your search query to get high-definition results. You also can add “3D” for three-dimensional content.

• Add “channel” or “playlist” to your search query to find sets of related videos.

8. Share a video starting in the middle

Did you watch a part of a video you just have to share? Instead of sending the entire video to play from the start, YouTube lets you share a URL that takes someone to an exact moment in the video.

On the desktop version, pause the video at the time you want, right click over the video and then select Copy video URL at current time. Now you can paste that URL into a message and send to a friend.

9. Watch 360-degree videos

Ever wanted to go somewhere you couldn't, such as an expensive bucket-list African safari, or back in time to the dinosaur age or an outer space vacation? You can experience it on YouTube with 360-degree videos.

If it's a 360-degree video recorded with a special camera or created with a computer program, move your phone or tablet — iOS or Android — around when in full-screen mode, and you'll see all the different angles while the video plays, or press your finger on the screen and manually move it around. On the desktop, use your mouse to drag the point of view around.

You can watch YouTube's more than 1 million virtual reality (VR) videos on a VR headset. Download the YouTube app inside your VR headset — such as Oculus Go, Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest or PlayStation VR — and launch fully immersive videos that change the “camera” angle whenever you move your head.

10. Watch videos with captions

YouTube says it has more than 2 billion videos with automatic captions. This could help you better understand the thick accents in a British soap opera or perhaps not disturb others around you. Just click on the Settings icon and choose to enable captions. If you want to see the closed captions in another language, you also can get an automatic translation where available.