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Help Youtube speed control

j bingham

Lurker
May 3, 2016
3
1
Does anybody still tolerate watching YT videos at regular speed?

If you have watched YT videos on a desktop or laptop, you may have stumbled upon the variable speed feature. It's a huge (yes, even, yuuuuge) time saver and once you have learned how and when to use it, you will find it hard to be on YT without it. And yet that's exactly what happens when accessing YT with a mobile device. This has been a known 'issue' for many years. But I haven't read anything that discusses why mobile phones don't have access to that feature. Does any one know?

I have tried a six or seven different browsers; no luck. The only workaround I could come up with was to remotely log in to my workstation. This setup, however, suffers from severe video degradation (though audio is fine). I am also aware of the approach of downloading the YT video and watching it through a player that has variable speed capabilities. That however is not a complete solution (e.g., private channel videos). I'd love hear about other approaches or solutions.

Why does this come across as such an intractable problem? It works fine on a desktop...it works fine on a laptop...but no luck on any mobile device (and I have tried multiple different devices and apparently this is also an issue with iphones). If it's a technical issue, I'd like to read up on it...then clean house with introducing a new app.
 
I just picked up a new Note 4 and just like with my S3, Chrome will not accommodate variable speed. While the cog does appear when accessing YT through a Chrome in desktop mode, it is non-functional. By the way, if you access YT through the app or through the mobile site, the cog is missing altogether.

While viewing YT in desktop mode through Chrome you can press on the cog after a single touch of the video (it's at the bottom off to the right) and it will bring up several options...one of them being Speed. However, in selecting a different speed, Chrome won't actually make any change. You can confirm this by setting it to 2x and then to .25x speed (the difference should be quite obvious). At least this is what I found testing it with a fully updated S3 running 4.3 as well as on my Note 4 running 6.0.

But...fortunately I do now find that Firefox, viewing YT in desktop mode, provides the solution I have been wanting so badly. Click on the cog and variable speed becomes a reality on a mobile device! I found this solution works on both my S3 and Note 4. Que bueno!

That said, I'm still interested in knowing why the cog is not available through the YT app or the mobile website. Is it a resource issue? Or...?
 
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