If you’ve browsed Youtube.com and saved your favorite videos into a playlist, you may have noted that there is no button to make the list repeat play when it’s reached the last video.
I don’t know about you, but if I’ve got a playlist of music I like, especially a long one, I’ve often wanted to figure out how to make it repeat in an endless loop.
Last night I discovered how to do this quite by accident (mostly, see notes for caveats). To spread the love I’m going to share that secret with you:
1. Open the playlist in Youtube.com you wish to make repeat.
2. Click the first video to make it play.
3. While it’s playing click Playlist.
4. A drop down menu should appear that says “Select Playlist”.
5. Select the playlist that the playing video is in.
6. Click ok. This will make a duplicate of the first video in the playlist you’re working with.
7. Return to the playlist you are trying to make repeat.
8. To do number 7 follow steps 9-13. If you already know how to do number 7, skip steps 9-13.
9. Hover the cursor over “Account” at the top of the screen.
10.A drop down menu will appear saying “My Videos, Favorites, Subscriptions Contacts, More…”.
11.Select “Favorites”.
12.The next screen will be all of your favorites with a playlist beside it.
13.Select the playlist you have been working with.
14.Find the duplicate of the first video in the playlist. It should be last or near last.
15.If the duplicate is not last or the original is not first then rearrange your play list so that the original is first, and the duplicate is last. This will trick the playlist into repeating indefinitely.*(Mostly. See caveat in notes.)
16.Start the playlist by clicking “Play All Videos”.
*Notes:
The key here on any playlist you want to repeat is to make the first and last video the same.
Sometimes lists will glitch and stop after so many plays (approximately 24 video plays by my test), whether it is set to repeat or not. You simply have to click “Stop Autoplaying” and re-click “Play All Again” to get the list going again. Youtube.com has this in its help section. They say they are working on it.
If you change your first video you will have to be sure to make a duplicate of the new first video and put it at the end of the list. Remove the duplicate of the original first video. If you leave a duplicate of any other video anywhere in the list it will cause the list to start to replay at that point in the list, cutting off the rest of the list during subsequent plays.
Because of the above, this technique can be used to make a repeating playlist variation in which the subsequent play through is shorter than the original first play. Do this by making the last video a duplicate of the one in the middle wherever you desire the repeated playing to begin. This will cause the playlist to play all the way through. However when it restarts it will restart midway through the list and just repeat the section after the duplicate video.
Any video in the list that requires you to click to confirm that you are an adult prior to play will interrupt the continuous play of the list, regardless of whether you have it set to repeat or not. You will have to restart autoplay during these songs.
