Let’s say your internet research takes you to a video on YouTube with an age restriction. You want to watch it (you know”for research purposes) but don’t remember your YouTube login information, or want to go through the hassle of typing a few more things in. Fortunately, there are two little URL tricks to help with that.
If you remove the watch?v=
and replace with embed/
, you’ll get a link that goes directly to the video without the rest of the YouTube site, and it’ll play full-width in your browser. So, for example, you would take this link::
youtube.com/watch?v=6LZM3_wp2ps
and change it to this:
youtube.com/embed/6LZM3_wp2ps
And you won’t have to log in. Alternatively, you can add nsfw
before the youtube.com
portion of the link:
nsfwyoutube.com/watch?v=6LZM3_wp2ps
This will take you to a different site to play the video, but it’s a bit faster to type in.
LPT: Tired of signing in/signing out of YouTube? [Reddit]
This story has been updated since its original publication.
Comments
7 responses to “How To Watch Age-Restricted YouTube Clips Without Signing In”
Cool lol. Gonna try that when I get home. Even though signing in doesn’t take that long it’s a pain in the ass.
I normally don’t comment on these sites but this really struck a chord with me. In particular how irresponsible LifeHacker is in posting this. Don’t get me wrong I’m a huge fan of “age restricted material”, much to my wife’s amusement and I’m sure there are other ways of finding out about this “hack” but to spell it out so easy for people who are being restricted for a good reason is stupidity. Yep they can find porn and stuff everywhere – I get that – but if a website has actually gone out of its’ way to restrict material then we should respect what they are trying to do and not find loopholes.
I’ll still visit LH daily but this is one of the posts I wish they didn’t have.
I think you’ve misunderstood the point of the article — it’s about removing the hassle of having to sign into your account, rather than allowing kids access to inappropriate content. (Plus, YouTube is pretty strict about explicit material so it’s not like kids would find anything truly hardcore anyway.)
Someone call the Waaambulance.
This is great! My issue isn’t about logging in to watch age restricted, it’s that you tube keeps a record of recently watched videos that anyone can see when using my PC or phone and so I have to clear the history so the kids don’t find and accidentally see it. If I want to show someone something I saw on you tube its great to jump into my recently watched and find it quickly, this hack allows me to keep certain vids off the recently watched list. Thanks 🙂
You can “pause” your history in YouTube. Click “History” from the left side bar, and then click the button at the top that says “Pause Watch History.”
Hah on my phone I can’t watch age restricted videos while signed in.