MarkN Video Speed

A lightweight extension that puts video and podcast playback speed behind a single keypress — no more digging through player menus.

Slow down, speed up, or return to normal with a single key. Works on YouTube, Netflix, podcasts, online courses, and other sites that use HTML5 media.

━━━ Only 3 shortcuts to remember ━━━

• Slow down (default: S) • Speed up (default: D) • Toggle 1.0x ⇄ your target speed (default: R)

That is all you need to learn. No menus to navigate. Each action can be rebound to any A–Z or 0–9 key.

━━━ A speed indicator that stays out of the way ━━━

So it does not disrupt your viewing, the speed indicator (such as "1.50x") appears at the center of the screen for just a moment when you change the speed, and fades out in about 0.3 seconds.

You can confirm the current speed at a glance, without opening the player's settings menu. It also works in fullscreen.

━━━ Speed persists across sessions ━━━

Once set, your speed is retained across tab switches, video changes, and browser restarts.

Settings are stored via chrome.storage.local only. They are not synced to a Google account, and they do not leave your device.

━━━ Re-applies speed when sites reset it ━━━

YouTube and a few other sites silently reset playbackRate to 1.0x after an ad, a seek, or a quality change.

This extension watches for those moments and reapplies your chosen speed automatically.

━━━ Embedded players, audio, local files ━━━

• YouTube / Vimeo / SoundCloud embeds in blog posts • <audio> elements — podcasts, audiobooks, web radio • Video files opened locally in the browser

The same shortcuts and HUD apply everywhere.

━━━ Privacy ━━━

What this extension does NOT do:

✗ Send analytics ✗ Show ads ✗ Contact remote servers ✗ Read your browsing history ✗ Read page content or form input

What it DOES do:

✓ Sets playbackRate on <video> and <audio> elements.

Source is MIT-licensed and available on GitHub.

Privacy policy: https://github.com/MarkN2000/MarkNVideoSpeed/blob/main/PRIVACY.md

━━━ Permissions (kept minimal) ━━━

• storage — to save your settings locally on your device. • activeTab — to read the current tab's URL when you open the popup, for the "exclude this site" toggle. • Host access — so the content script can find <video> / <audio> elements on the pages you visit.

━━━ A few additional details ━━━

• Shortcuts auto-disable while typing in text fields • Modifier keys (Ctrl / Alt / Shift / Meta) are ignored, avoiding collisions with browser or site shortcuts • Step size is adjustable in 0.01 increments (useful for language learning) • Any single site can be excluded with one click • Speed up / slow down also updates the toggle target, so the speed you fine-tune while watching becomes the toggle destination • Popup UI switches between English and Japanese automatically

━━━ Open source ━━━

GitHub: https://github.com/MarkN2000/MarkNVideoSpeed License: MIT