Three keys, any video, and it remembers each site
Free, two permissions, and no network calls anywhere.
The keyboard is the interface. S slower, D faster, R back to normal, and the popup exists mostly for the per-site default and the counter. If you have to open a popup to change speed you will stop bothering by the third video.
It remembers a different speed per site, automatically. Two and a half times on your course platform, normal on Netflix, and you never set it twice. It also works inside shadow DOM, which is where a lot of modern players live and where a surprising number of speed extensions quietly do nothing.
It stays off on video calls. Changing playback rate during a call breaks the call, so that is a deliberate exclusion rather than a gap.
The short version
Video Speed Controller puts the speed on three keys and remembers what you picked for each site.
- Press S and D to change speed on any video without reaching for a menu.
- Let it remember the speed per site, so lectures start at 1.8 and films start at 1.
- Turn on skip silence and get through a recorded meeting in noticeably less time than the speed alone would give you.
Best for: anyone working through recorded courses, meetings or conference talks.
Replaces: the built-in speed menus that cap at 2x and forget your choice the moment you navigate.
How to use it
- Install it. There is nothing to configure.
- Open any video and press D a few times.
- Press R if you overshoot.
- Tick remember if you want that speed to be this site's default from now on.
- Turn on skip silence from the popup if you watch lectures. It will ask to hear the tab at that point.
Skip silence saves more than the speed does
On a recorded lecture the dead air between sentences is where the real time goes. Slide changes, pauses for breath, someone finding the next window. It adds up to more than the speed multiplier saves on a lot of talks, and the two stack.
This needs to actually hear the tab, which is a permission I did not want to ask everybody for, so it is off until you switch it on. If you never use it the extension has exactly one permission, local storage for your speeds.
The honest bit about permissions
This is the one extension of mine that runs a small script on every page. I would rather say that plainly than have you find it in the manifest.
The reason is that S and D have to work the instant a video appears. Making you open the popup first, on every page, would be a different and worse product. The script looks for video and audio elements and does nothing else, and there is no network code anywhere in it.
What it can access, and why
| Permission | Why it needs it |
|---|---|
| Local storage | Your per-site speeds and the time-saved counter. |
| Reaching an already-open tab | A declared content script never runs in a tab that was open before you installed, so without this the shortcuts do nothing on those tabs until you reload them. |
| A script on every page | So the keyboard shortcuts work the moment a video appears. It looks for video and audio elements, nothing else. |
| Hearing the tab (optional) | Only if you turn on skip silence, which has to detect silent passages. Cross-origin video cannot be analyzed any other way. |
Full detail in the privacy policy.
The things people ask before installing
Does it work on Netflix and YouTube? Yes, and on the course platforms too. Those are all cross-origin media, which is what stops the simpler approaches from working at all.
Will it interfere with a video call? It stays out of the way on calls. That was a specific fix rather than a happy accident, because a speed controller firing during a meeting is a genuinely bad afternoon.
Any network calls? None whatsoever. Two permissions, no server, nothing recorded.
Free, and it stays free. No account, no sign-up, and nothing leaves your browser.
FAQ
Does it work on Netflix, YouTube and Udemy?
Yes, including players inside shadow DOM, which is the usual reason a speed extension fails on one specific site. If you find a player it cannot control, that is a bug worth reporting, and knowing the site is enough for me to look.
How fast can it go?
Well past the point of being useful. Browsers themselves get unreliable with audio above about four times, and speech becomes unintelligible before that for most people. So the practical limit is set by your ears and your speakers, well before the extension runs out of room's.
Why does skip silence need to hear the tab?
Because the obvious approach does not work. Reading the video element directly is silently blocked whenever the media comes from another domain, which covers YouTube, Netflix and every course platform worth using it on. The graph runs and returns silence, so the feature would look like it worked and do nothing on exactly the sites you wanted it for. Capturing the tab avoids that, at the cost of a permission.
Will it mute my video if something goes wrong?
It should not. Captured audio is routed straight back to your speakers, and the code tears the capture down on any error rather than leaving it hanging. Muting your video would be a worse bug than the one skip silence fixes, so it gets handled first.
Does it track what I watch?
No. It counts how much time you have saved, and that number lives on your machine. There is no analytics and no network code in it at all.