10 YouTube tips and tricks for beginners

It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t know YouTube. The famous video streaming site is present in the lives of many people and familiarizing yourself with how it works is not a very complicated task. However, there are ways to improve your experience on the site.

The first tip is to create your own YouTube user account. Even if you don't intend to become a famous youtuber or even upload any video to the platform, know that there are interesting advantages to using the service logged with your account. To start, you can say whether you liked a video or not, leave comments about it, create playlists with your favorite clips, among other things.

Here are some more tips on how to get the most out of YouTube.

1. Organize your favorite videos

After creating your YouTube account and logging in to the site, you can start using the service to add videos to your favorites list or compile videos in playlists.

To do this, navigate to the video in question and click on the "Add to" button, which is just below the video. Then choose from the menu that will open the location where you want to save the link. You can choose between playlists created automatically by YouTube or create custom playlists according to your preferences (Music, Vlogs, Technology, among others).

The saved videos can be accessed again through the YouTube menu, located in the upper left corner of the website and indicated by the icon of the three horizontal strokes. When you open a specific playlist, you can also change your privacy settings:

3. Monitor the performance of your videos

If you choose to upload videos for public viewing, you may want to know how it is doing and what type of person is watching your content.

YouTube has a tool called Analytics that allows you to monitor your specific channel and videos using up-to-date metrics and reports. Among the data available in each report are information such as number of views, traffic sources, demographic information, among others. Quality of Video is Essential for Creator, So Creator Should Choose the Camera Wisely

You can access YouTube Analytics directly via the youtube.com/analytics link or log in to your YouTube account and click on the arrow next to "Upload Videos" at the top of the page, then click on "Analytics". Finally, use the menu on the left to access the different reports.

4. Make registrations:

A good tip for improving your YouTube experience is to sign up. They allow you to follow the content you are interested in and receive updates whenever a particular channel posts a new video. This can be great to keep up with all the news from the bands you like the most, or else all the news from Newyork Times.

for example.

As with the other resources cited so far, to subscribe to a channel, you must be logged into YouTube. Then, just click on the "Subscribe" button, located just below the name of a user or channel.

To manage your subscription settings, just click on the “Manage subscriptions” option, located at the bottom of the YouTube menu in the upper left corner of the website. Click on the gear icon next to the desired channel name to configure notifications, updates, among other preferences.

5. Visit your channel

Still on the main YouTube menu, click on the "My Channel" option to see your own channel, which is made up of your playlists, activities on YouTube and videos uploaded to the platform. All items on this page are editable, allowing you to create a personalized homepage so that people subscribed to your channel, or those who just visit your channel, can view it.

6. Download videos from YouTube

Theoretically, it is not possible to download other people's videos on YouTube. However, as there is an app for everything in this world, YouTube downloads are no different. Here at Canaltech we already gave you a tip on how to download videos from the main internet channels.

7. Disable automatic playback

YouTube has a feature called "autoplay" that aims to make life easier for users when choosing the next video to watch. After watching a YouTube video on your computer, you may have noticed that a 10-second countdown appears on the screen, and then another related video is automatically played based on your viewing history.

If you don't like these suggestions and prefer to manually choose what to watch next, just look for the button to enable / disable automatic playback that appears on the video page. The feature will remain disabled until you activate it again.

8. Use shortcuts to navigate

Keyboard shortcuts can be really useful when browsing YouTube, especially when playing videos.

Check out some shortcut tips you can use:

• K: pause or play
• J: rewind 10 seconds
• L: fast forward 10 seconds
• M: mute
• Shift +>: increase playback speed
• Shift + <: decrease playback speed
• F: engage Full Screen mode
• Esc: Exit Full Screen mode
• Home: back to the beginning of the video
• End: go to the end of the video

9. Keep your activities private

After logging into YouTube, click on your photo which will be located in the upper right corner of the screen and then click on the gear icon to access your account settings. In the menu that will appear on the left, select the option "Privacy"; here you can define whether you want to keep your subscriptions, videos you liked and playlists private or open to the public.

10. Search keywords only in video titles

When you type a keyword in the YouTube search bar, you don't always find what you want. This is because, by default, the results shown in the platform's search engine are based on video titles, tags and description.

A tip for finding more specific videos using a word in your title is to use the command "allintitle:" before the desired keyword. Example: "allintitle: Newyork Times".

Extra Tips:

If you’re already feeling familiar enough with YouTube, you’ll probably like these two extra tips to get more out of the video streaming platform:

Create GIFs from any YouTube video

That's right, you can turn a snippet of any video available on YouTube into an animated GIF. All you need to do is add the word "gif" (without quotes) before the word "youtube" in the address bar with the link of the desired video (changing from "youtube.com" to "gifyoutube.com").

This command will take you to the page of a third party service, where you will be able to choose the start time, duration, title and subtitle of the GIF. You will also be able to share the GIF created directly on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, send via email, embed on your website, create a link to it, among other sharing options.

Another way to create your GIFs is to go to gifs.com and then paste the link to the YouTube video you want to convert to GIF. Follow all the steps indicated.

Watch videos while browsing the web

Browser extensions can be really useful. A good example of this is "Floating YouTube", an extension for Google Chrome that keeps a YouTube mini player floating on top of all the windows you are using, allowing you to watch the video you want while doing other activities on the web.

Now that you're on YouTube, be sure to subscribe to our channel to keep up with the news. Every day we post a new video; check out ;)