How to speed up (or slow down) a Facebook video

TL;DR

In google chrome, simply:

1. Press command + option + j on Mac (ctrl + shift + j on PC). This will open chrome dev tools
2. In the window that just opened up, find the ‘Console’ tab and click on it
3. Find the little flashing text cursor where you can type things. Hint: it’s to the immediate right of the > symbol
4. Paste this code in and hit enter

videos = document.getElementsByTagName("video");
for(var i = 0; i < videos.length; i++){
  videos[i].playbackRate = 2;
}

^^ this will change the speed to double speed, but you can edit the 2 on the second last line to 0.5 for half speed, or to 3 for triple speed, you get the gist!

Full write up:

It would be really handy if Facebook offered the ability to change the speed of videos, but as of mid 2020, they don’t!

But that’s okay, we can alter it ourselves. Here’s what to do:

In chrome, open developer tools (command + option + j on macOS, or control + shift + j on Windows PC).

You’ll see a massive warning. Facebook warns you because fraudsters can trick you into copying code into the javascript console, typically to steal user passwords and do other bad things. So it’s a good time to mention that you should never run any code here unless you’re absolutely certain about what it does and that it came from a trusted source.

Click next to the little > arrow and enter the following:

document.getElementsByTagName("video")[0].playbackRate = 2

This code will find the first video on the page (scanning top to bottom) and double its playback speed!

You can select any other video by simply altering the number inside the square brackets. [1] selects the second video, [2] selects the third, and so on.

You can also set the playback speed to whatever you like by altering the parameter at the end of the code, for example, this will make the playback speed 2.5x, but you can set it to whatever you like. 10 is a laugh!

document.getElementsByTagName("video")[0].playbackRate = 2.5

Happy viewing!