Always on YouTube? Here are 6 tips, tricks and secrets to make your binging better

If you're one of the estimated 2.5 billion YouTube users – the second largest social media platform on the planet, behind Facebook's purported 2.9 billion users – then you already know quite a bit about the 18-year-old video platform.

You likely heard of (or maybe subscribe to) YouTube Premium (from $8/month), which lets you watch millions of videos without ads before and during a video (and plays ad-free music, too), while YouTube TV (from $11.99/month) is a streaming service that includes live TV from more than 100 broadcast, cable, and regional networks.

But there is so much more about YouTube – including many tips and tricks to getting the most out of the service – whether it's "official" things you can do, such as the company's own shortcuts, or third-party "hacks" to enhance your binging sessions.

Here are six things to try.

Sign into YouTube

While not required, it's better to sign into YouTube (with a Google account) as any playlist you create will be synchronized between all devices.

Signing in also lets you like and comment on videos, share them to social media, upload your own content, subscribe to channels you like, and report or block videos you don't like.

Download YouTube videos

If you know you're going to be offline for a while – such as a long flight and you don't want to pay for Wi-Fi – you can download videos to watch later.

The official way to do this is join YouTube Premium, as downloading videos is one of the benefits to the service.

Not endorsed by Google, there are several websites and apps that let you download YouTube videos to view offline. One of the fastest ways is to simply add "pp" after the word "youtube" in a web browser, to take you to a website to download the video.

For example, this video of Prince performing Purple Rain during a Super Bowl Halftime show, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NN3gsSf-Ys – becomes https://www.youtubepp.com/watch?v=7NN3gsSf-Ys.

Note that if you download a video to watch offline, content creators and/or rights holders cannot monetize your views.

Create a GIF from a YouTube video

Another unofficial hack is to create an animated GIF from any part of a YouTube video.

As you likely know, GIFs – which are silent and is played in a loop – are fun to post on social media.

Go to MakeaGIF.com and click on "YouTube to Gif." Now copy and paste the YouTube video link into the search window. After it finishes processing, you can choose the quality, length, speed, and what the start and end time is.

While free, an account is required to create a GIF using this tool, and you'll have a small watermark unless you pay for a Premium account ($11.95/month).

Please respect copyrights, and only use your own YouTube videos to create GIFs.

Share video from a specific spot

If you want to share a YouTube video at a precise point, it's easy to do this on a PC or Mac.

Click the Share button and look for the “Share at” box below the link and it will show the time at which you currently have the video stopped (such as 1:04).

Choose this or select another time you want – when the recipient gets the link and clicks "Play," it will start exactly where you wanted it to.

Master YouTube shortcuts

If you watch YouTube on a computer, you can do more in less time by learning a few shortcuts. There are nearly 25 of them, but here are some examples:

• Sidebar: Play/Pause.

• M: Mute/Unmute.

• Left/Right Arrow: Seek backwards/forward 5 seconds.

• > and <: Speed up or slowdown playback.

• Up/Down Arrow: Increase/Decrease volume by 5%

There are some YouTube shortcuts for mobile devices, too, such as double-tapping on the left or right side of the video on a phone or tablet to skip 10 seconds forward or back.

Search before you get to the site

Why do something that takes two steps when you can do it in one?

Rather than going to YouTube.com and then searching for something to watch using YouTube's search window, do it all in your favorite web browser to watch the same video.

For instance, in Google Search, Bing, Yahoo!, or DuckDuckGo, type something like "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 trailer youtube," and you'll see the video thumbnail in your search engine's results – which you can click to play it right then and there.

Follow Marc on Twitter for his “Tech Tip of the Day” posts: @marc_saltzman. Email him or subscribe to his Tech It Out podcast. The views and opinions expressed in this column are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: YouTube tips and tricks: 6 ways you can make your binging better