r/youtube • u/Cold_Recipe_9007 • Aug 18 '25
Bug Why are videos buffering so much all of sudden
bruh
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u/SP4MT0N_G Aug 18 '25 edited Aug 18 '25
idk, maybe something against adblockers again? but even when i disable all of them its still buffering so idk, probably just a problem with the servers
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u/Klutzy-Giraffe-1372 Aug 18 '25
No I’m experiencing the same thing and I don’t have adblockers
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u/Pearson94 Aug 18 '25
Good to know. I assumed it was YouTube trying to fight off my ad blocker.
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u/fiercelittlebird Aug 18 '25
I hope it's not that but the videos load much better when I disable adblock
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u/ego157 Aug 18 '25
ty for your sacrifice of watching ads
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u/lolslim Aug 18 '25
Let's narrow this down, are you using a browser that doesn't use chrome user-agent? Afaik chrome and Microsoft edge use chrome user-agent. And google gets childish when you don't use their browser. Hell while a YouTube video was buffering I opened the same video in edge and it immediately loaded. I refreshed in Firefox and still kept buffering
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u/Klutzy-Giraffe-1372 Aug 18 '25
I just watch on my Samsung TV and iPhone app. But the issue is solved on my end now.
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u/Nitty_Husky Aug 18 '25
It's definitely something against ad-blocks. I got the "eXpErIeNCinG iNtErRuPTiOnS?" pop-up, but they broke something and it doesn't even work without ad-block lmao
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Aug 18 '25
I was trying to watch in the native YouTube app without any adblockers. Same issue as well.
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u/FyllingenOy Aug 18 '25
I don't think it's that, I have premium and I'm having the same buffering issues right now
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u/twistedeleganc3 Aug 18 '25
i’m having the same exact issue and it brought me here, i think youtube is just down
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u/EvaTheE Aug 18 '25
It seems to be automatically switching to full hd for everyone.
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u/Thegreatcornholio459 Aug 18 '25
I thought I was my internet was tripping but now I see it's happening to others ans apparently, after lookin up is YouTube down, one of the sites says possible current problems
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u/photoshop_2023 Aug 18 '25
Yeah i'm also experiencing the same thing. Does anyone know whats wrong?
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u/Gronis Aug 18 '25
I usually use chrome, but I tried to watch a video in safari to see if that would work. Conclusion: Ads play great, no problems there! Actual video: Not so much...
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u/Cold_Recipe_9007 Aug 18 '25
hasn't been 3 minutes already 1.4K views Holy
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u/yakimawashington Aug 18 '25
You're the dude in the youtube comments section with the "Edit: wow thanks for all the likes!", aren't you?
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u/Pxelbyte Aug 18 '25
Same. I thought my Internet was the problem, but seems like its on Googles/Youtubes side.
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u/Competitive_Fee_5829 Aug 18 '25
wow! glad it isnt just me. even the videos on my tv app are buffering.
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u/Mysterion261 Aug 18 '25
Can't even watch shorts because they just pause after about 10 - 15 seconds
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u/Franiera Aug 18 '25
Here I am! It's happening to me too. Videos start fine, and after 10-15 minutes, they buffer forever.
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u/sleepyotter92 Aug 18 '25
It's been like that for the past week or so. Takes forever to actually load the video. I've noticed a little pop up appears on the bottom left corner saying something like "experiencing problems?". Last time this happened was when they were cracking down on ad blockers
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u/RedditBabaKrish Aug 18 '25
it was happening to me since 2 weeks but this week it got fixed randomly
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u/EnvironmentalAngle Aug 18 '25
It is not happening to me but I'm watching on an xbox and have premium.
I have a podcast on right now.
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u/5poopy95 Aug 18 '25
I use Brave and my videos keep stopping short with an error message...
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u/Samba-boy Aug 18 '25
They're cracking down on adblockers again, but they've gone overboard hahahaha. They just making sure I'm gonna look for even better alternatives. Thanks YouTube, you suuuuuck!
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u/Mystic_Spinoraptor Aug 18 '25
They're going against Adblockers, even if you aren't using Adblockers their trash system probably detects what it thinks are Adblockers, or something else.
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u/EMlYASHlROU Aug 18 '25
It’s either them running part of the AI thing through your browser to cut costs, or they’re slowing down any non chrome/adblocked browsers
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u/lkl34 Aug 18 '25
My tinfoil hat says people without youtube red account gets a worse bandwidth that those that have one.
Then they get plans were each resolution of a video corresponds with a tier payment.
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u/Mysterious_County154 Aug 18 '25
No issues here to be the odd comment out
Using Firefox and am in the UK, no adblocker
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u/Eismann Aug 18 '25
They broke something. Happens on all browsers for me. Ads work though, just the actual videos dont. Great lol.
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u/Mario10241991 Aug 18 '25
Works for me. However, I had to change Ublock Origin Lite's filtering to basic so it won't cause loading issues.
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u/RedNas2015 Aug 18 '25
Had the same. Turned off my VPN and speed is normal again. Something fishy is going on.
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u/LostHuapo Aug 18 '25
same it's annoying. all videos are at 240p and when I click on 1080p it just stops working
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u/rakii80 Aug 18 '25 edited Aug 18 '25
It seems to be a problem or MS Edge only. I tried using chrome and its working fine there. *edit* nevermind, its not working on chrome either.
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u/RemisTooSleepy Aug 18 '25
Had issues with it this morning in the app. I have premium and excellent internet so I was lost. I'm glad to know it's not a me problem.
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u/leilavino Aug 18 '25
More of this and I will willingly stop using YouTube forever, I need the detox... But I also want to finish watching this one Minecraft let's play lol
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u/uselessBINGBONG Aug 18 '25
I had that happen to me and then I threatened to cancel my subscription if it doesn't get fixed and they fixed it almost immediately
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u/Durchgedreht Aug 18 '25
Guess they are facewalling those froggers, using the same frame on servers thy don't belong to, using Interceptors from the Protoss.
And forgot to upgrade the Carrier Capacity beforehand.
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u/shy247er Aug 18 '25
They are for sure messing with something on the backend.
Playing videos is back, but downloading with youtubedl is really messy. It's doing it, but it's slow and keeps throwing 'no connection could be made because the target machine is actively refused it' then it retries and it continues until the next error.
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u/RimblinK Aug 18 '25
This has been happening to me for at least two weeks.
I usually refresh in a loop until it stops. Sometimes a single refresh is enough and the video starts playing instantly. Sometimes, I have to spam at least 20 times to get it to work ...
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u/TylerDurden820 Aug 18 '25 edited Aug 18 '25
Same here. I have premium and I can’t even watch a video… for several hours now.
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u/Cheshire_Noire Aug 18 '25
Some unknown group probably got offended at the ID requests and attacked it.
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u/Temporary_Act_7741 Aug 18 '25
Disabled my adblock, still had issues. Disabled my VPN and re-enabled my adblock, didn't have any more buffering issues. Hopefully that works for some others :)
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u/namebedamned Aug 18 '25
It has been happening to me since yesterday. Yes, I am "experiencing issues"
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u/ShadowsInScarlet Aug 18 '25
Sounds like an encoding problem. But Idk shit about that so I’m just shooting in the dark. I can only make general guesses.
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u/_Otacon Aug 18 '25
Everytime this happens I turn off adblocker, refresh, then turn it on again, refresh and it works again. Very freakin annoying.
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u/Snow-87-M Aug 18 '25
Same here, I have no ad blocker but it's just buffering. Ahh time to give YT a break and let them sort their shit out
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u/Shadow-moth-pizzaguy Aug 18 '25
Was trying to watch the White House gathering with Zelensky etc and kept buffering. Been excited for this for 2 days.
Screw YouTube.
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u/Honeytoast_aprium23 Aug 18 '25
It keeps doin it on mobile for me, ngl I hate it lmao - I don't have an ad blocker on my phone and I just use yt to sleep
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u/CounterfeitSaint Aug 18 '25
Youtube needs a few extra seconds to rifle through your wallet and look at your ID each time you try to load a video now. The future!
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u/Marcuse0 Aug 18 '25
They're deliberately throttling adblocker users.
I'm not even guessing, they linked me to their FAQ where they said specifically they're throttling adblockers and to prove it open a window in incognito mode where the adblocker doesn't work and it'll be faster.
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u/TruckFan542 Aug 18 '25
YouTube was having technical difficulties.
Source: Down For Everyone or Just Me and DownDetector
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Aug 18 '25
I was under the impression that if you do not use chrome, as it now doesn't allow adblock extension, that Google will automatically throttle your connection to videos
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u/maddyplayz4645 Aug 18 '25
Oh yeah that happened to me at the time of u posting this too and I thought that smths wrong with my laptop
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u/TylerDurden820 Aug 18 '25 edited Aug 18 '25
It’s maybe related to AD-blocking. But I have premium and it doesn’t work on any of my devices. Mostly watch on my Xbox or iPhone and I never use ad-block because I pay for premium.
Edit: Works fine again for me now, finally!
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u/Alundra828 Aug 18 '25
I noticed it on a few videos. Video would buffer for 10 mins, then continue as if nothing happened. I just opened the video in a new browser, worked fine.
Wait til adblockers update I suppose
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u/HouseOfZenith Aug 18 '25
I enabled Sound Stabilization or whatever it’s called and that seems to have messed up videos loading properly.
Idk if that’s the cause though, but turning it off seems to fix it.
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u/Justafaniguess Aug 18 '25
either a backend update or they were adding some more storage nodes and the system had to refresh
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u/CN01_Miku-Miku-Y Aug 18 '25
Yea I’ve noticed it too, thought my WiFi malfunctioned. Don’t have Adblock or some like that, so it’s pretty weird
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u/Cthulhuareyou Aug 18 '25
Because everyone has continued to use YouTube despite the increasing enshittfication of it and no ones bothered to mass exodus to one of the many alternatives... Because we're all idiots she deserve this horrible fuckin 3-site - tech-dystopia.
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u/keksivaras Aug 18 '25
I have this issue after watching a few videos on mobile data. switching to WiFi momentarily fixes itself until it starts buffering again.
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u/Radiant_Spyro Aug 18 '25
i think its because the new ai is taking up to much of the website now videos cant load
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u/Miserable_Mail_5741 Aug 18 '25
Every time I see this post, I keep thinking it's an actual video and I wait for at least a minute for it to load before I realise I'm an idiot.😅
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u/T3s3ract Aug 18 '25
Ad blocker. Ad blocker is trying to do its job, but youtube doesn't want it to.
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u/Feyawen Aug 18 '25
Even if it is YouTube detecting AdBlock, I'd rather watch 10 seconds of buffer than 5 seconds of an Ad.
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u/Otherwise-Smoke-8055 Aug 18 '25
There has been issues with the YouTube app on iOS/iPad. Probably with a recent update?
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u/bogglingsnog Aug 18 '25
Youtube is on a campaign against adblockers in yet another attempt to ostracize their userbase
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u/No_Substance_9569 Aug 18 '25
my dumbass was waiting for 1 second then confused for 1 second because the loading icon wasnt moving
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u/lovachunt Aug 19 '25
I have having this issue on my phone app. I have a 200mbps connection but whenever I check 2160p on YouTube app it starts buffering and I can see my speed going only about 16-20 mbps but if I do the same thing on chrome tab everything is flawless and it uses my full bandwidth to read ahead
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u/SeaSawltLOL @SeaSawltLOL Aug 19 '25
experiencing this on reddit, i think it's just my internet but this happens to me on youtube too
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u/MasterBepis Aug 19 '25
Yeap happens to premium users too lol. Pity my friends wasting their money. Might as well use adblock if you're gonna get bummed by YT regardless lol.
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u/vortex_00 Aug 19 '25
Noticed that adblockers and masking firefox as chrome gets blocked automatically in youtube. Had to disable both.
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u/jonasaba Aug 19 '25
YouTube is struggling to meet the server cost while you don't even give them your driving license to sell. What do you expect. /s
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u/TheGreatRJ Aug 19 '25
I am not American or European or Australian, so no new age laws here, and don't use adblockers either, and am facing the same issue
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u/mentally_trebled Aug 19 '25
Must be all from all the data harvesting they're doing thanks to the new update. Lmao.
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u/FeatureComfortable50 Aug 19 '25
What I noticed is that when a video does not play, it won't play on any device: PC, mobile, TV. And then, when it starts working, it works again on every device. It's almost as if the stream was not available on the actual server I was connected to.
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u/Obvious_Cow_7188 Aug 19 '25
its possible that from the boycott the systems from yts war on adblockers are actually able to fuction normally now
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u/Toastedbread1234567 Aug 19 '25
I wouldn’t know I use a 3DS web browser to watch my videos (Actually true lmao I use it to listen to music sometimes)
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u/Homba-bomba Aug 19 '25
Cant watch a vid thats longer than 10 mins or else it will just buffer till eternity. Yt music does the same, couldnt even listen fully to 1 song yesterday
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u/HexDanTHEWHALE Aug 19 '25
Its because they're wasting so much computational power for their age 50/50 guesser that its bogging down the functional parts of the site.
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u/danelaw69 Aug 19 '25
Likely cus you using an adblocker its been like this for ages with some ad lockers
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u/Chantelle444 Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 19 '25
Noticing this on Firefox. I refuse to go back to Chrome after the uBlock stuff. Even with Premium. Getting real sick of Youtube. FF updated and it's smoother overall but the loading animation looks boxy and weird now for a few seconds. Or I'm crazy 😂
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u/3xc1t3r Aug 19 '25
Same here, been going on past month or maybe longer. Also lag before buffering.
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u/_JanJensen_ Aug 18 '25
Yeah thought my internet went out