Use These Gestures To Zip Through YouTube Videos

Tapping around your screen is for suckers. If you really want to navigate your way through the YouTube app on Android and iOS, there are four gestures worth knowing about—and odds are good you’ve already stumbled across one (or most) of them during your daily YouTube binges.

Swipe down to exit full screen mode and minimise videos

The newest YouTube gesture lets you swipe down to close a video while viewing it in full screen mode. You can still tap the “minimise” button to exit full screen mode, but swiping down is much more convenient.

When you’re not in full screen mode, swiping down will also minimise the video you’re currently watching, freeing up the screen so you can search and browse other channels.

Swipe right/swipe left for skipping between videos

If you’re watching videos with autoplay enabled—or you’re watching an entire playlist of videos—swiping right will skip ahead to the next video, while swiping left will take you back to the previous one. The app remembers how far into a video you were, so if you accidentally skip ahead and swipe to go back, you’ll immediately pick up where you left off.

Double-taps for skipping through videos

Double-tapping the left or right edges of a video will fast-forward or rewind the video by a few seconds. The app defaults to skipping/rewinding 10 seconds per double-tap, but you can change how much you timeshift in the app settings.

Just make sure you’re being precise about where you tap—it’s easy to accidentally pause or skip ahead to the next video.

Swipe up to see related videos while in fullscreen

If you’re watching in full screen and don’t want to minimise the video to check out the related and recommended videos list, just swipe up. This brings up a semi-transparent overlay with a small selection of related content while the video you’re watching continues to play in the background. Tap one of the recommended videos to swap over to that instead. Swiping down will close the suggestion box.

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