How to Loop YouTube Videos to Play Repeatedly

Feb 21, 2016 - 7 Comments

How to loop a YouTube video repeatedly, directly in YouTube

Have you ever wanted to play a YouTube video repeatedly in a loop? Maybe it’s a song, a TV show, a kids video, music video, something funny, whatever it is, you’d like to play it repeatedly on a loop. WhileYouTube is generally designed to play a video once and then either stop playing or move onto another different video in a playlist automatically, a hidden feature allows YouTube users to replay any video in an infinite loop, without having to turn to any tricks, funky third party websites, shady downloads, or anything else. The new YouTube looping playback feature is built right into the browser based player and is easy to use.


To loop a video with YouTube for infinitely repeated play, be sure you are using a modern web browser. Whether that is Chrome, Safari, or Firefox doesn’t matter, as long as it’s a new version, it should support the looping video feature. The loop trick also works the same on any operating system, so it shouldn’t matter if you’re on Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux. The rest is really easy and it works with any video or movie that is on YouTube or from YouTube, even if they’re embedded in a webpage.

How to Set a Playing YouTube Video to Loop Repeatedly on Mac or Windows PC

  1. Open any web browser and visit any YouTube video, for example purposes you can use the embedded video below which plays 9 seconds of crickets chirping (exciting!), or click here to load the same video in a new window
  2. Start playing the video as usual, then right-click (or two-finger click on a Mac trackpad) on the video as it’s playing to bring up a hidden menu of options, choose “Loop” from this popup menu
  3. How to loop a YouTube video

  4. The video will now play repeatedly in a loop, you can pause or stop the video as usual or right-click and choose “Loop” again to uncheck the looping playback feature and stop the movie from repeatedly playing

Here is the embedded short YouTube sample video of crickets chirping to test this out easily, just play the video, right-click, and choose “Loop” to try the looping playback feature out right now on this very webpage.

This is a great feature that is not yet well known, but it’s quite useful for obvious reasons and should be appreciated by many YouTube viewers for all kinds of videos.

If you’re not sure how this all works, the tutorial below will demonstrate how to loop the above example YouTube video with this easy trick:

There doesn’t appear to be any limitations on the video loops or on any videos themselves, you can loop long videos or short videos, videos belonging to someone else or uploaded yourself from iOS or from OS X, it doesn’t matter, if it’s on YouTube it will have the loop feature. This can be great if you want to repeatedly play an album or song on YouTube, or the same show, or some nice scenery for a screen saver or mood video, the use cases are wide. Enjoy!

Loop a music video or an entire album video on YouTube

Note that at the moment this appears to be limited to desktop versions of YouTube, so Android and iPhone users won’t yet have the ability (that we’re aware of, post in the comments if you figure out how to loop on mobile devices without apps or websites!), so if you were hoping to repeatedly play a YouTube video in the background on the iPhone on a loop, you’ll have to just start the video over again when it finishes, as the feature is not yet implemented on the mobile side of things.

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Posted by: Paul Horowitz in Tips & Tricks

7 Comments

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  1. Joanne says:

    Does anyone know how to loop a video when you are logged in on a tv?

  2. Sona says:

    Thank you so much for this!

  3. Suresh says:

    simple and useful.

  4. Stuart says:

    Looping works on my Moto G on Android. Long press to open the menu.

  5. Wharf Xanadu says:

    It is repeating on my iPhone too

  6. AR says:

    Thanks. Great tip. Had to resort to third party tools and websites for years to do this. Nice to know it’s built into the browser now.

  7. Dale says:

    Thanks for this tip. I just recently discovered the “nature sounds” type YouTube videos (like the crickets chirping) and like to have them play when going to bed – induces sleep. Most are not long enough, so this solves the problem.

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