"Can you recommend a video speed controller for online videos?" is frequently asked on Reddit, Quora and other communities. Even though the player allows for speed change, it is not granular enough. For instance, what if you prefer playing back YouTube at 1.7x instead of 1.5x or 2.0x? Other times, the speed control option may be missing if the video is embedded on a webpage, such as Vimeo videos, Netflix, HBO, Amazon, or proprietary video players.
In this post, we offer a round-up of video speed controllers for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox browsers, all tried-and-true for HTML5 videos, embedded videos, and course lectures.
No matter you are a student trying to save time on educational videos such as Khan Academy videos, Canvas videos, D2L training videos, Bongo lectures, and other online videos, or you live a life in 1.7x and want to quickly consume TED talks, TV series, and YouTube videos, you will find the solution here.
Besides speeding up and slowing down, the speed control extensions also come with features to rewind, so that you can easily repeat the last few seconds when you miss something. Hotkeys all adds up to the convenience. You can jump to the corresponding sections below for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and for iPad, iOS, etc.
Recommend: Best Video Speed Controller – VideoProc
The ultimate goal of using a video speed controller is to speed up to save time, or slow down to savor over the content. Yet buffering can spoil everything. Besides using the best online speed controller listed below, you can also grab a toolkit to save videos offline and adjust speed.
VideoProc (now branded as VideoProc Converter AI) is designed with a downloader engine and video speed controller. You can download video and change video speed easily and at any rate as you prefer.
Click the buttons below to download VideoProc Converter AI:
Note: The Windows version now supports AI-powered Super Resolution, Frame Interpolation, and Stabilization to enhance video and image quality. These AI features are not yet available in the Mac version but will be coming soon.
Video Speed Controller for Chrome
According to many studies, we talk at an average of 150 words per minute, while our brain can listen to and proceed with the content almost 2-3x faster. It would be a time saver to speed up videos if the person talks slowly in the video. In other times, you might want to slow down the video for better comprehension or rewind the video for repeating.
1. Video Speed Controller
Video Speed Controller extension in Chrome web store is by far the most popular and handy plugin. This playback speed controlling extension can speed up, slow down, advance, and repeat videos with hotkeys. It currently has more than 2 million users and receives an average of 4.6 out of 5 ratings from more than 3000 users.
Unlike YouTube's native speed controller that requires a combination of keys Shift + arrow, you can quickly use S, D, R for slowing down, speeding up, and reset to 1.0 normal speed. Z for rewinding back 10 seconds, X for fast-forwarding 10 seconds, and V to hide the controller.
Offered by: igrigorik
Ratings & User Base: 4.6/5 | 2,000,000+ users
2. YouTube Playback Speed Control
This Chrome extension works nicely to change the speed of YouTube videos specifically. You can press + and - respectively to increase or decrease the playback rate of the video. If you don't love the keyboard button, you can assign other hotkeys to control the speed. To make sure the settings take effect, you need to close the setting tab after changing parameters for this plugin.
Besides changing the video hosted on YouTube, the best thing about this extension is its support for embedded YouTube videos on another webpage. The controller will show up in the top right corner of the player once being enabled.
Offered by: shrestha.pujan
Ratings & User Base: 4.7/5 | 100,000+ users
3. Transpose
Transpose is a combo of a video speed controller for Chrome and a pitch changer. You can easily dial the playback speed by percentage to change the speed of an online video in real-time.
It offers more controls with the Loop feature. You can time mark the start and end point to start looping the video. This is especially handy if you are watching tutorials, learning how to dance, how to sing, etc. In fact, Transpose considered itself the best tool for Musicians in terms of rehearsing and practicing.
Its rewinding button is set to fast forward or backward by 5 seconds. One thing to notice is, it is less capable with embedded videos. Still, you can find the origin of the embedded video, and open it on the corresponding platform for successful speed control.
Offered by: transpose.video
Ratings & User Base: 4.3/5 | 100,000+ users
4. HTML5 Video Speed Control for Google Chrome
As its name suggests, this Chrome speed control extension works nicely on any HTML5 video, either embedded or on the platform itself. If you are looking for a lightweight tool with a barebones speed changer, this plug-in offers only the feature to increase and decrease the speed.
HTML5 Video Speed Control also works with Google Drive, a feature not seen in other apps in this roundup.
Offered by: Free Software Utilities
Ratings & User Base: 4.6/5 | 50,000+ users
5. VC - One Video Control
OVC offers features for video speed control, PiP control and Mute control. This video speed controller has a nicely designed interface, with the finest speed control options available. You can scroll to adjust the speed granularly, click the Repeat button for rewinding, and one-click to mute the video.
Best of all, you can either long skip the video by 5 seconds, or short skip the video by 30 seconds, which is a unique feature among other speed controller extensions. With the fine control, you can quickly skip boring sections or horror parts of the video.
The PiP feature will pop the video out of the browser for an immersive watching experience. One-click max speed toggle is also available (16x).
- a, d: speed up/down
- w, s: volume up/down
- z, v: long skip backward/forward
- x, c: short skip backward/forward
- m: mute
- p: pop out
Offered by: Nimrod Fridlin
Ratings & User Base: 4.9/5 | 4,000+ users
6. Video Speed Manager
Video Speed Manager is another Chrome speed controller with a large user base. It features a handy UI to quickly assign keys for various controls, including rewind, advance, preferred speed, hide controller, and so on. It also allows you to indicate the preferred rewind time, and speed change step (0.1 for every step for instance).
Video Speed Manager is designed for HTML 5 videos, meaning you can easily adjust the speed of videos embedded on a webpage, not to mention YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook videos, and many other popular platforms.
The speed controller bar will show up in the top left corner of the video player. You can press V to hide the bar.
Offered by: John Davis
Ratings & User Base: 3.9/5 | 100,000+ users
Video Speed Controller for Safari
Accelerate for Safari
If you need a playback speed controller for Safari browse, Accelerate for Safari is the best app. It supports changing the speed of HTML5 video when you surf online in Safari. All the basic controls are included: S for Slow Down, D for Speed Up. You can quickly toggle between 2x and 1x by pressing A and R.
As a video speed controller add on, this Accelerate app also allows users to airplay or initial Picture in Picture mode. Videos can stay float on top of other apps for multi-tasking. For instance, you can watch Netflix, Twitch, Hulu, Apple TV+ and more, while working on other apps. For Safari iOS and iPad users, read the detailed tutorial on how to change video speed in Safari.
Offered by: Ritam Sarmah
Ratings: 4.3/5
Video Speed Controller for Firefox
The most popular Video Speed Controller for Chrome is also available on Firefox. Besides this extension, you can also try another two add-ons listed below.
1. Playback Speed
Playback Speed is a popular Mozilla extension for Firefox. It supports custom settings for frequently used speed levels. You can customize the pop-up window by adding or deleting elements to be displayed. According to your preferences, you can adjust the value of speed step, such as 0.1, 0.2, 0.6 etc.
Playback Speed controller also supports dark mode for Firefox. The extension stays next to the search box on your browser.
Offered by: WaldiPL
Ratings & User Base: 4.8/5 | 2415 users
2. SpeedUp
SpeedUp is another Firefox speed controller designed to adjust the speed for online streaming videos, including Facebook, Reddit, Twitch, Netflix and other platform you can think of. This extension doesn't have other fancy controls, but it simply allows you to quickly select a desired speed or drag the slider.
Offered by: Jaibalani
Ratings & User Base: 3.9/5 | 561 users
FAQs
1. How to use video speed controller?
Video speed controller can be installed for Chrome, Safari, Firefox and other browsers. You can use the hotkey or click on the extension to speed up, slow down videos, some extensions also come with rewinding, PiP, and fast-forwarding features.
2. Why is video speed controller not working?
Make sure you have toggled it on in the extension managing panel. Sometimes when you installed many add-ons, those installed later may somehow stay hidden and disabled. You can pin it and enable the speed controller. Additionally, you can restart Chrome, clear cache, or disable other extensions.