Top 5 YouTube URL tips and tricks you need to know

YouTube, you know that it is extremely world’s most popular video sharing website by Google averaging more than 3 billion videos watched every single day and 48 hours of footage uploaded every single minute. No needs more introduction to its fans who spend a considerable amount of time watching and sharing videos.

While most of these users know every nook and corner of this website, there are some features that are hidden deep within. So, Here we bring some YouTube URL tips and tricks that you may not know…

1. Know your YouTube video ID

Yeah! here is how to fine YouTube video ID from the URL. Whenever you upload a video in YouTube, an 11 digit alphanumeric is assigned to your videos. These video ID plays an important role in YouTube URL tips.

By default the URL should be like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v={video-id}
For eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfUizNEU89M
The 11 digit code “MfUizNEU89M” is the video ID of your uploaded videos.

2. View high quality videos on YouTube

YouTube gives you the option to switch to high quality videos for some of the videos, however you can view the YouTube video in high quality append the following at the end of the URL as &fmt=6 (360p) or &fmt=18 (480p) or &fmt=22 (720p HD) or &hd=1 for even higher quality.

For eg:
&fmt=6 increases the resolution from 320×240 to 448×336, Flash 7 video @ 900Kbps; audio @ 44.1KHz 96Kbps Mono CBR. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KBj9tnnwII&fmt=6
&fmt=18 increases the resolution to 480×360, H.264 video @ 512Kbps; audio @ 44.1KHz 128Kbps Stereo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KBj9tnnwII&fmt=18
&fmt=22 increases the resolution to 1280×720 (720p), H.264 video @ 1024Kbps; audio @ 44.1KHz 232Kbps Stereo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KBj9tnnwII&fmt=22 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KBj9tnnwII&hd=1

3. Embed Higher Quality Videos

While the above trick works for playback, if however you want to embed HD quality videos you need to append “&ap=%2526fmt%3D18” and “&ap=%2526fmt%3D22” or “&hd=1” to the embed URL.

For eg:
<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4KBj9tnnwII?version=3&hd=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

4. Auto play an embedded video

Normally when you embed a Youtube video and load the page, the player is loaded and it sits there waiting for you to hit the play button. You can make the video play automatically by adding “&autoplay=1” to the URL part of the embed code.

For eg:
<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MnL05F5cjV4?version=3&autoplay=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

5. Watch YouTube videos in full screen on Browser

You can watch full screen of your YouTube videos in any browser, just replace the VIDEO ID with your video ID in the following example.

For eg: https://www.youtube.com/v/{video-id}
Old Link: https://www.youtube.com/v/7hbNcyw9AhA
New Link: https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/7hbNcyw9AhA
If the URL of the video that is blocked in your country is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v={video-id}, you can access it by going to above link like https://www.youtube.com/v/{video-id} or https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/{video-id}.

YouTube URL tips and tricks Introducing video from YouTube:

Do you know of some similar YouTube URL tips and tricks or any hacks? Let us know of your opinion in the comments section below.