How To Adjust Playback Speed In The YouTube App
You can manage the YouTube playback speed for videos on the web. This is a long-standing feature on the website, and the playback speed controls allow you to speed up or slow down a video. If you use YouTube to watch movie trailers or the latest music video by your favorite artist, the speed controls aren’t of any use to you. If however you use YouTube to take advantage of all the educational content, technology tips, and even game walk-throughs, this feature is useful. You can now adjust YouTube playback speed in the YouTube app for iOS.
It’s highly likely that the YouTube Android app has had this feature for a long time and it’s just the iOS version that’s catching up. Regardless, you can adjust playback speed in the YouTube app the same way on both platforms.
How to Change YouTube Playback Speed in the App
Open the YouTube app and pick a video to watch. Tap the player once to bring up the playback controls, then tap the Settings gear icon. Choose Playback speed from the menu. These steps work the same way on both Android and iPhone/iPad.
Select a speed for video playback. Available speeds are 0.25x, 0.5x, 0.75x, 1x (normal), 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x, and 2x, though the exact options shown can vary by device. Speeds above 1x will make the video play faster, and speeds below 1x will slow it down.
This setting will follow the same convention as it does on the web version. If you change the YouTube playback speed of a video, it will apply only to that video. The setting will not persist across all videos that you play. You have to change the speed on a per-video basis and you have to change it each time you watch the video. For example, if you play a video at 2x speed and later play it again, it will play at normal speed.
How to change YouTube playback speed on desktop
Changing playback speed on the YouTube website is straightforward and requires no extra tools. Open any YouTube video in your browser, then click the gear icon in the bottom-right corner of the video player. Select Playback speed from the menu that appears, then choose the rate you want. The standard desktop speed range runs from 0.25x up to 2x, covering the same options available in the mobile app.
Desktop is also the easiest place to go further if the built-in speed options are not enough. Browser extensions and other tools integrate directly with the YouTube player on a computer, giving you more granular control than the standard menu provides.
How to go faster than 2x YouTube playback speed
YouTube’s built-in playback speed controls top out at 2x on both the app and the website. If you need to go faster — for example, when working through a long lecture or tutorial series — you have a couple of options on desktop.
The quickest unofficial method is the browser developer console. Open a YouTube video in Chrome or another Chromium-based browser, press F12 to open DevTools, click the Console tab, and enter the following command:
document.querySelector('video').playbackRate = 2.5;
Replace 2.5 with any rate you want, such as 3 or 4. Press Enter and the video will immediately play at that speed. A few things to keep in mind: this is a desktop-only workaround, it is unofficial and unsupported by YouTube, and audio quality can degrade noticeably at very high rates, especially above 3x. The setting also resets if you navigate to a new video, so you would need to run the command again each time.
For a more convenient solution, browser extensions such as Video Speed Controller let you set custom YouTube playback speed rates with keyboard shortcuts and save your preferred speed between videos, which makes them a better fit if you regularly watch content above 2x.
Feature Disparity
YouTube playback speed is now a standard feature available across Android, iPhone/iPad, desktop browsers, and some TV and streaming platforms. You no longer need to worry about one platform lagging behind another for this particular control. That said, the exact speeds available and how you access them can vary slightly depending on your device and the version of the app or browser you are using, so if an option looks different from what you expect, checking for an app update is a good first step.
