While it’s safe to say that most YouTube videos are intended to be watched only once, there are many videos actually worth watching over and over, such as favorite music videos, kids’ shows (the parents out there will understand), or ambient background videos like fireplaces or aquariums. Until recently, however, there was no native way to set a YouTube video on “repeat” indefinitely.
The YouTube community addressed this problem in multiple ways, with creators looping videos on the editing side and uploading massive 12-hour compilations, and plug-in developers offering numerous browser-based solutions to automatically reload and replay a video when it ended. Thanks to a recent YouTube update, however, these solutions are no longer necessary. Here’s how to loop YouTube videos using the native service itself.
First, using a modern Web browser such as the latest versions of Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, find and start playing the YouTube video you want to loop or repeat. Once it’s playing, right-click on the video itself to reveal the familiar options menu.
You’ll see a new option located there called, unsurprisingly, Loop. Left-click it once and a checkmark will appear to the right of the option. Return to your video and, once it’s complete, the video will automatically start over at the beginning. Of note, Google has implemented its own server-side loop technology, and the video will start playing again without even needing to reload the browser page.
The only drawback to this new YouTube loop feature is that if the video featured a pre-roll YouTube ad, you’ll probably see or hear it again once the video restarts (in some brief testing, we noticed that a pre-roll ad played again after looping in 4 out of 5 forced loops). This of course also applies to any ads or introduction that the video creator themselves has inserted into the beginning of the video. This new feature is therefore not perfect, but at least users are finally able to access this relatively basic functionality without relying on third party plugins.
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