I’ve been learning Blender from YouTube for the past year or so and I finally landed on a workflow that doesn’t make me want to throw my Mac out the window.
Sharing in case anyone else follows along with video tutorials (Blender, Figma, DaVinci, whatever).
The problem
Following a YouTube tutorial means constant context-switching. Watch 15 seconds, pause, switch to Blender, try the thing, forget what he said, switch back, rewind, try again. PiP helps but gives you a tiny box with no controls — you still need to click into the browser to pause or rewind.
My hands are on the keyboard in Blender. Reaching for the mouse to manage a video in another app breaks everything.
What I ended up with
- Search for the tutorial on YT
- Once I have it, I copy video address or drag it to Tutorini Player (a small app I built for this exact problem)
- It strips YouTube down to just the video - no sidebar, no recommendations life fullscreen but in the window
- Turn on Ghost Mode - the video goes semi-transparent and floats over my Blender viewport
- Double-tap ⌘ to pause/resume from anywhere - no window switching, hands stay on keyboard
That last one changed everything for me. I’m in Blender, instructor says “now extrude that face,” I double-tap ⌘ to pause, do the thing, double-tap ⌘ to resume. Never leave Blender.
Ghost Mode at about 50% opacity - enough to see what the instructor is doing, transparent enough to see my viewport underneath. I resize the window to cover just the top-right corner.
This sounds simple, and it is. That’s the point — the old workflow (YouTube in Safari → ⌘Tab → ⌘Tab → scroll timeline → ⌘Tab) had enough friction that I’d lose 10-15 minutes per hour just managing windows.
Anyone else following video tutorials regularly? Curious how you handle the video-workspace juggle.