YouTube Keyboard Shortcuts

A few weeks ago when I wrote about Downie — the excellent Mac app for downloading high-quality local copies of web videos — I mentioned that one reason I prefer downloading videos is being able to step through a video frame-by-frame. Turns out you can do that at YouTube’s website, just with keys I wouldn’t have guessed. This support document lists a whole table of shortcuts, but the ones that most interest me:

j   Seek backward 10 seconds
k   Play/Pause
l   Seek forward 10 seconds
m   Mute/Unmute
,   Step backward 1 frame
.   Step forward 1 frame
<   Slow down playback
>   Speed up playback

The implied mnemonic for , and . for stepping is that they’re the unshifted glyphs on the same keys with < and > — but the actual < and > shortcuts in YouTube (requiring the Shift key) are used to speed up/slow down playback.

★ Wednesday, 12 March 2025