YouTube Has a Hidden List of Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts are easy to find when using the app on a Mac or PC. When you look at a feature in a menu, you will often see the corresponding keyboard shortcut, which you can then use to get things done faster. Websites, on the other hand, often don’t show you these shortcuts, even if they are present in large numbers, forcing us to stumble upon them when we accidentally press a key. As it turns out, many websites have a master list of keyboard shortcuts, they just hide them behind a specific keyboard shortcut.
So, what is this secret shortcut that opens all the hidden keyboard shortcuts? Shift + / . Or of course ? .
YouTube has a long list of hidden keyboard shortcuts
This button combo is your ticket to see the hidden list of keyboard shortcuts for your favorite websites. I first stumbled upon it while browsing YouTube: somehow I accidentally pressed Shift + / and suddenly I was presented with this full set of keyboard shortcuts for the site. Many of these keyboard shortcuts I already knew, and you probably already know: K plays and pauses the video, J and L rewind and fast forward respectively. However, other keyboard shortcuts can come as a surprise: you can fast forward and rewind frame by frame using , and . during a pause. You can also slow down or speed up playback using < and > ( Shift + , ) and ( Shift + . ).
It’s worth checking out the full list to see if any of these keyboard shortcuts are new to you, and if some of them could actually come in handy during your next YouTube binge. For those who take YouTube screenshots as part of their job, frame-by-frame scanning is especially useful.
Many websites also hide their keyboard shortcuts from users.
It’s not just YouTube: other popular websites you use every day hide keyboard shortcuts behind Shift + / . Twitter, for example, taught me that g+m starts a DM, and u and x can mute and ban an account, respectively. Facebook also has a list of keyboard shortcuts: you may know that L likes a post, but do you know that you can use / to search Facebook or that you can pin keyboard shortcuts to the bottom right of the window that change depending on which , what are you doing? This is the most useful option I’ve seen so far.
I found that other websites that have these keyboard shortcut lists tucked away are Reddit, Spotify web app, WhatsApp web app, and Twitch. I’d like to know how many websites include these hidden keyboard shortcuts as an option, but it’s hard to find any information on the subject. In the meantime, it’s best to experiment with sites you visit frequently. It doesn’t seem to matter which browser you use (the shortcut works for me in both Chrome and Safari).
This feature is similar to how things work in iPadOS with a keyboard connected: if you hold down Command , you’ll see a full list of keyboard shortcuts for the specific app you’re using (there are plenty of them , too).