YouTube keyboard shortcuts: the full list for Windows and Mac

Most people drive YouTube with the mouse and a scrub bar. That is fine for a music video and genuinely costly for a two-hour lecture, where you are constantly seeking, re-listening and adjusting speed.

The ones people look for most:

Here is the full set, grouped by what you're trying to do, followed by the handful worth building into muscle memory. Unless a line says otherwise, the keys are the same on Windows and Mac, and Shift + / (the ? key) on any video opens YouTube's own list.

Play, pause and mute

• K: play or pause, wherever you clicked last.
• Space: also play or pause, but only while the player has focus. If a button has focus, Space presses that button instead, and elsewhere on the page it scrolls.
• M: mute and unmute.
• Play/pause media key: play or pause. The next-track media key moves to the next video in a playlist.

Playback speed shortcuts

• Shift + . (the > key): speed up one step.
• Shift + , (the < key): slow down one step.

Each press moves through YouTube's preset speeds, which run from 0.25x to 2x in quarter steps, and a label on the video shows where you've landed. For a speed in between, such as 1.1x, open the settings gear, choose Playback speed and then Custom.

The speed keys pay off most when you vary them within a video: faster through the parts you know, slower for the dense ones. For practising music or a language, slowing down is the useful direction; see how to learn a song from YouTube.

Fullscreen, theater and miniplayer

• F: fullscreen. Press F again, or Esc, to leave it. Double-clicking the video does the same.
• T: theater mode, a wider player that keeps the page around it.
• I: open the miniplayer, a small player in the corner while you browse.
• Esc: leave fullscreen, or close the miniplayer or an open dialog.

Skip forward, skip back and jump chapters

• Left / Right arrow: back or forward five seconds.
• J / L: back or forward ten seconds.
• 1–9: jump to 10% to 90% of the video. 5 lands at the halfway point.
• 0: back to the start. Home does the same, and End jumps to the last seconds. On a Mac keyboard without those keys, use Fn + Left and Fn + Right.
• Ctrl + Left / Right (Windows) or Option + Left / Right (Mac): previous or next chapter, on videos that have chapters.
• , and .: one frame back or forward, while the video is paused.

Captions and volume

• C: captions on or off, if the video has them.
• + / −: while captions are on, make the text bigger or smaller.
• O / W: while captions are on, cycle the text and caption window opacity.
• Up / Down arrow: volume up or down 5%.

Next video, previous video and search

• Shift + N: next video. In a playlist, that's the next one in the list; anywhere else, it's the video YouTube suggests next.
• Shift + P: previous video, in a playlist.
• /: jump to the search box.
• Shift + / (the ? key): open YouTube's own list of shortcuts.

360° videos

• W / A / S / D: look up, left, down and right.
• [ / ], or − / + on the number pad: zoom out and in.

The five that actually matter

A list this long is not something anyone memorises at once. If you are working through long-form content, these five carry almost all the benefit:

1. K instead of Space, because it works no matter what you last clicked.
2. J and L for ten-second jumps, the right size for catching a sentence you missed.
3. Shift + . and Shift + , to speed up during familiar material and slow down for dense parts.
4. C for captions, which are the fastest fix for an unfamiliar accent or bad audio.
5. A number key to move around a long video without hunting on the scrub bar, or the chapter keys if the video has chapters.

When shortcuts stop working

If nothing responds, focus has usually moved to the search box or a comment field and your keystrokes are going there. Click an empty part of the page and try again. For the rest of the causes, from Mac desktop shortcuts to embedded players, see YouTube keyboard shortcuts not working.

What the shortcuts still cannot do

Shortcuts move you around a video quickly. None of them help you return to a specific moment tomorrow; for that you need something that persists between sessions.

YTMark adds three more to the list: B saves the moment you are on, X clips a stretch of the video that loops, and Shift+B opens your saved moments for that video. For the wider picture, see how to bookmark a YouTube video at a specific time, how to take notes on YouTube courses and how to loop part of a YouTube video.