How to skip forward and back in YouTube app and website

Learn how to skip forward or backward in the YouTube mobile app or website without the need to interact with the scrubber or progress bar at all.

Skip forward and back settings on YouTube

YouTube’s video player in the app and website has a handy scrubber for navigating a playing video clip.

However, it makes it hard to fast forward or backward a longer video unless you sand down your finger first because the tiny control wasn’t designed for a very short jump. Thankfully, there are easy ways to go ahead and rewind, and we will share those tips with you.

Note: You cannot fast-forward ads in the YouTube app or website using these methods.

Skip forward or backward in the YouTube app

  1. Open the YouTube app on your iPhone, iPad, or Android phone and start playing a video you’d like to watch.
  2. Double-tap on the left side of the video player to rewind ten seconds.
  3. Double-tapping on the right side of the video player skips forward ten seconds.
Skip forward or backward in YouTube app

Note: These shortcuts work in both portrait and landscape modes.

Change YouTube double-tap skip duration to something other than 10 seconds

Out of the box, when you double tap on the YouTube video player in the app, it jumps forward or backward in increments of 10 seconds, which I think is the sweet spot. But what if you want it to skip only 5 seconds or more than 10 seconds? Thankfully, the app lets you customize this setting.

  1. Open the YouTube app and tap You from the bottom bar.
  2. Now, tap the gear icon from the top right.
  3. Choose General.
  4. Tap Skip forward and back and select 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, or 60 seconds.
Change 10 second skip setting in YouTube app

After this, when you double-tap on the YouTube video player, it will skip the number of seconds you selected in the above steps.

Skip in the YouTube web video player on a Mac or PC

If you’re watching a video at YouTube.com in a computer browser like Chrome, Firefox, or Safari, you can press the right arrow key on the keyboard to skip forward 5 seconds and the left arrow key to go back 5 seconds.

Magic Keyboard with left right arrow keys highlighted

Unfortunately, I could not find a built-in way to change this 5-second skip behavior to 10 seconds or something more.

Other YouTube tips for you: