How can I make YouTube constantly display in-video time during playback?

January 15, 2017 8:03 PM

I'm going to show a YouTube video to a bunch of people in a context (DIY MST3K) where we need to have constant access to the accurate playback clock for the movie. I.e., I want to show the timeline bar that appears at the bottom of the screen when you wiggle your mouse, constantly, but without constantly having to wiggle the mouse. Is there a way to do this? Bonus if it can work with Chromecast.
posted by gurple to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Best answer: If you leave the mouse hovering over a button (like Settings or Exit Full Screen or whatever) then the interface stuff never goes away.
posted by theodolite at 8:31 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Well, now I just feel silly! There's my solution. Thanks!
posted by gurple at 8:38 PM on January 15, 2017

Response by poster: I can't seem to make that work with chromecast, which would be really nice. If I chromecast the tab that YouTube's playing in, it full-screens the video as soon as I press play and leaves out the interface stuff.
posted by gurple at 8:40 PM on January 15, 2017

Others will probably have a better answer, but in the worst case you could download the video and then play it in something like vlc, where I think you can specify that the interface should be always be visible (and which I assume can be cast?)
posted by trig at 1:52 AM on January 16, 2017

If you cast the entire screen rather than only the tab, it should show identically on the TV as it does on the monitor. There will be lag, though, so you need to make sure audio is playing from the TV and not out the computer speakers.
posted by wierdo at 6:55 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]