Helpful Tips for using YouTube


YouTube has millions of videos and it can seem a bit overwhelming knowing where to start. However, there’s so much great material there, it’s worth pursuing how to get the best from it. Much of the information contained in our collection of Indoor Activities has come from our carefully searching through YouTube’s videos which provide a great starting point for dipping into new interests. So here are a few tips for when you’re watching them:


(1) YouTube makes its money by advertising alongside the videos we watch for free, so a combination of these three types of advert might appear (unless you pay to watch ad-free):

  • Very short film ads that play across the whole of your chosen screen area before the video plays, with the words ‘Video will play after this ad’ in the bottom right-hand-corner and you have no choice but to let the whole advert play.
  • Longer film ads that play across the whole of your chosen screen area, with a small count-down counter in the bottom right-hand-corner for the first 5 seconds of the ad until the words ‘Skip Ads’ appear. Clicking on these will make the video start straight away without your needing to watch the rest of the advert.
  • There are also small ads that pop-up onto the lower middle part of the video once it is playing. These can be removed by clicking on the ’X’ on the right-hand-side of the advert.

(2) You can choose how you watch each video by clicking on the Settings (Gear Wheel Symbol) on the right-hand-side of the bar at the bottom edge of the video (if this bar is not visible, move your cursor onto the video). For most videos you’ll see the following options:

  • Playback speed – If you’d like to speed up or slow down the video, you can choose from the pre-set speeds listed, or click on ‘Custom’ (in the top right-hand-corner) and use the slider to pick your own playback speed, for example x1.15 means the video will play 1.15 times faster than it would when set to 'normal'.
  • Quality – Generally this is set to ‘Auto’ but occasionally you might wish to make the video play at a certain resolution (picture quality). For example, if your internet connection is slow and causing the video to play unevenly, then by lowering the quality setting to, say, 480p the video will play more evenly although the picture quality will not be as good as if playing at a higher resolution.
  • Autoplay – clicking on this button moves it between the left-hand-side grey-OFF setting and the right-hand-side red-ON setting. Autoplay can be useful if you’re wanting to watch lots of videos automatically one after the other. However, if you have limited time and don’t want to get drawn into watching more than you intend, it can be helpful to keep Autoplay turned off.
  • Annotations – when this button is turned on, pictures and writing (which are not adverts) are overlaid on the video. You can click on these annotations to make certain actions happen, for example subscribing to the channel or playing a recommended video.
  • Subtitles/CC (closed captions) – not only can you turn these on or off, but in some settings you can choose their font style, size and colour. So if you’d like the subtitle writing to be 4 times bigger than it normally is, you can make the changes by clicking ‘Options’ in the top right-hand-corner. 

(3) You don’t need to be signed in to watch YouTube videos (however if you wish to write a comment about a video, ‘like’ it, or subscribe to a video provider’s channel, you’ll need to. (Setting up a YouTube account is free).