YouTube is one of the largest platforms for video-streaming on the internet, enabling every internet user to find their favorite videos online whenever they would like to. It is an incredibly useful tool to use for everything for education to music sampling to just plain old entertainment, which makes it a site that many people cannot be without. Although YouTube’s interface is clean and relatively easy to use, whether you make videos or just like watching them, here are some handy apps and programs that could greatly improve your overall YouTube experience.
Additional Services
At $11.99 per month, YouTube Premium is an ideal subscription service when it comes to renovating your experience while giving you the YouTube you know and love. One of the greatest advantages of YouTube Premium is its ad-free nature. Say goodbye to the blaring advertisements that precede cookery guides to choral music and skip straight to the heart of your favorite video. You can also save videos to watch offline, another great benefit for those who travel or live in remote areas. Doing this will ensure that your video will never stop halfway through again. Other benefits include being able to play videos in the background while you browse and YouTube are even starting to develop shows under the banner YouTube Originals.
Converter Tools
One great way to make the most of YouTube is the ability to take YouTube videos with you wherever you go. ConvertVideo is a YouTube to Mp3 converter that allows you to convert any video into an easily transportable format that you can that download to any device and watch away from the YouTube app. This service is absolutely free, meaning that you can convert unlimited videos to Mp3 that can be downloaded straight from their website, making taking your favorite videos with you an uncomplicated process. This can also help you to watch videos on browsers that struggle to support YouTube videos directly.
Video Quality Report
If you have trouble with your video quality or resolution when using YouTube, Google’s Video Quality Report may be the answer. This extension shows you data on the quality of video that your internet provider supplies, enabling you to understand and fix what is potentially damaging your YouTube experience. This report also shows you what factors are affecting your YouTube and splits these into different definitions which you can then use to understand your video quality.
Useful Extensions
Magic Actions is a Chrome extension that can enhance your watching experience with a variety of different functions. These options range from cinema mode, which includes a wider screen to the usual video size, and AutoHD, so you can watch all your video at the highest quality automatically. These allow you to have control over your own experience, choosing the options to suit you and your video usage. This aims to make your viewing experience more comfortable and suited to your needs.
Using YouTube for social media influencing
One of the staples of social media that can be found on just about every platform there is gifs. If YouTube is one of the sources you use for producing content for your blog posts, then turning sections of your own videos or of related content that your followers will enjoy into gifs is a great way to help promote engagement with your own online presence. The easiest way to do this is by using the Gif Maker tool on Giphy. This is an easy tool to use to produce quality gifs in a short amount of time that can be added to your videos, in your blog posts, or in messages on Facebook and Instagram.
Easter Eggs
It is not a well-known fact, but YouTube actually has a whole host of Easter Eggs that you can find to make the site look and behave differently in amusing ways. For example, if you type the word ‘awesome’ while a video is playing (not into the search bar, just on your keyboard) then the progress bar will start flashing in different bold colors. Another Easter Egg is to search for the ‘do the Harlem Shake’ into the search bar, and an icon will appear which says ‘pause’ in the upper left corner. When you click on this icon, the website will start to do the dance for you.
Perfect for a party
Karaoke is a great addition to any house party you want to hold, and YouTube actually has a function where you can turn music videos into Karaoke tunes for everyone to start singing along to. All you need to do is get Musixmatch lyrics for YouTube which will go through its extensive catalog of song lyrics and apply them in real time to the songs you want to sing along to. This tool is also great for finding out what the lyrics to songs are when the singer is hard to understand or is rapping particularly fast.
Make sharing the specifics easier
This might be one of the most simple YouTube hacks you will come across but will also prove to be one of the most useful. When you have a very long video and you want to share a specific part of it with a friend or, if you are working in a teaching capacity, to show your students a specific section, you can share the video with them starting at the precise time the extract starts. Simply play the video up until the starting point and then hit pause. Then, do a right click on the video and select ‘copy video URL at current time’ to share the exact extract you want them to see without having to download and edit the video for ages. There are many different options to help you get the most out of YouTube, whatever your budget is. Whether you would like a more comfortable viewing experience, or the ability to watch videos anywhere and at any time, there is a set of applications to suit you and your needs.
