Despicably Clever: URL Hacks For Content Creators
Tags: tricks, contentwriting
Published: 2024-05-27 16:27:32

## Intro:
YouTube is like a big box full of videos waiting to be watched. I like to share cool podcasts and new demos with my friends at work. Sometimes, when people send us a video, they tell us to start watching at a certain part. This made me wonder, how can we make watching videos better for everyone? In this blog, I’m going to talk about some easy tips I found that help us share and watch YouTube videos in a better way, so we always get to the good parts quickly

## Transforming Your YouTube Links with These Tricks
**Tip 1** - **Time-Travel Trick**:
the essence of jumping straight to the desired time in a video, making it easier for your readers to get straight to the interesting part that you wanted to chat about. This could be by just adding a time parameter and value in seconds. 

For example if I wanted to share the Microsoft Builds  Keynote section about the Co-Pilot announcement 

```
Original Link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OviTSFqucI

```
Adding the time parameter
```
&t=2254
```
GitHub Co-Pilot 
```
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OviTSFqucI&t=2245s
```

A neat shortcut for navigating through videos efficiently.

**Tip 2** - **Skip Start Trick**:

This title conveys the idea of bypassing the initial part of a video by using seconds, which is perfect for when you want to skip straight to the action without the wait. It’s a handy trick for viewers who want to get to the point fast.


Adding the start at parameter (units in seconds)

here we are skipping first 34 seconds. 
```
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBCrJaLseQc&t=35s
```
This is similar to the timing one, but is a bit faster to type and doesn't require you to remember a certain timestamp.

**Tip 3** - **Thumbnail Deception**:
It's common when searching Google for images to see pictures from YouTube videos, usually titled maxresdefault. With a URL tweak, you can easily view a high-quality thumbnail for any YouTube video (if it has one) by visiting the following:

```
https://img.youtube.com/vi/**_vBCrJaLseQc_**/maxresdefault.jpg
```

**Tip 4** - **Thumbnail Deception**:
Found a YouTube video that has a GIF-worthy moment? You can easily create an animated GIF from any part of a video by adding gif before the YouTube link.

```
https://gifs.com/watch?v=**<u>vBCrJaLseQc</u>**
```

**Tip 5** - **Transcripts **:
Video transcripts are really useful in many cases. Say you want to grab a line from a video, but it’s annoying to keep stopping and typing it out. Or maybe you’re trying to locate a part of a video, but you don’t want to sit through the whole thing again. If you have the video’s transcript, you can quickly find what you need without all the hassle

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ylg0me2v4bbtragur2h2.png)

**Tip 6**- **Screen off / Sound On**: 
If you've tried listening to music on YouTube via your mobile device, you may have noticed one thing: You can't navigate out of the app. You have to keep YouTube open, and you can't use your phone for anything else, in order to listen to something on YouTube. Kind of frustrating if you're trying to multitask on your commute home, right?

Now, there are hacks so you can listen to YouTube content in the background while still using your mobile device. 

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/13514529?hl=en

https://www.howtogeek.com/840247/how-to-view-the-youtube-desktop-site-in-chrome-for-android/


More amazing content
https://support.google.com/youtube/topic/9257530?hl=en&ref_topic=9257610&sjid=2243655045144781321-EU


Do share what tricks I have missed out