YouTube is experimenting with a way to help sufferers like me watch videos as quickly as humanly possible. The trial, which YouTube Premium subscribers are eligible for, lets you long-press on the video player to set the playback speed to 2x, according to YouTube experiments page (through 9to5Google).
To me this sounds like a huge improvement; Currently, increasing playback speed on YouTube can take some annoying steps. On the mobile app, you need to tap on the video, tap on the three-dot menu, tap on playback speed, and so You can choose between the different options. It’s a similar set of steps on mobile and desktop web. (Though, on desktop, you can use Shift and the less-than or greater-than keys to speed things up or slow them down without digging into menus.) The new feature seems to take a bit of TikTok inspiration: if you long-press on a TikTok video, the app will bring up a bunch of different options, including a playback speed menu.
The long-press YouTube test is available until August 13, the experiments page says. I’m not a Premium subscriber, so I can’t test it myself, but I sincerely hope that YouTube rolls out the feature to everyone at some point after the experiment ends. (And if anyone on YouTube is reading this, please let me watch videos at over 2x speed.)
