You can find just about anything on YouTube, and it can provide hours of information and entertainment. In 2020, there were more than 5 billion views of at-home workouts and 1 billion views of face mask tutorials. Sometimes, you’ll experience slow videos on YouTube.
That’s likely due to buffering. The stream stops and starts again. YouTube video buffering can be a huge source of aggravation when you’re trying to watch a video.
Read on to find out how to solve buffering on YouTube.
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Turn on Stats for Nerds
YouTube has a feature meant for developers but can go a long way to help you figure out your connectivity issues. It’s called Stats for Nerds.
You’re able to see the connection speed, buffer health, and network activity. You’ll also get other information about the video itself.
Here’s how you can turn on Stats for Nerds. From a computer, go to a video page like you’re about to watch that video. Right-click the video, and at the bottom of the pop-up menu, click on Stats for Nerds.
From the YouTube app, go to your account settings, click on General, then Enable Stats for Nerds. You should be able to get basic information about the buffering issue and your network.
Try Using Another Browser and Device
YouTube might be buffering because your internet browser is causing issues. If you’re having issues with YouTube in Chrome, then try it out in Edge or Firefox. If it works, then you’ll want to clear out the temp files in Chrome and turn off extensions.
If it doesn’t work, then check to see if other devices are having issues. We’ll cover that in the next step.
Test Your Internet Speed and Devices
Any issues related to the internet speed need to go through some testing to isolate the issue.
You want to check two things when YouTube is buffering. The first thing is your internet speed. The second is to see if the speed is consistent across your devices.
Use a speed testing tool on your desktop computer, mark it down, and then check it on your phone, tablet, and other devices.
The results won’t be exact, but they’ll be in the same ballpark. If the results are slow across your devices, you’ll want to directly plug your computer into your router with an ethernet cable.
Your internet connection happens in two parts – a modem and a router. Your internet service provider may have given you separate devices, or they’re combined on the same device.
The modem is the device that you use to connect to the broader internet. You’re able to send information and receive information.
A router turns the internet signal into a wireless band so you can connect all of your devices over WiFi.
You want to see if you can narrow down the connection issue by plugging directly into the modem. If you have a faster internet speed than you logged with your tests, your router may have an issue.
In that case, you’ll want to reboot the modem and router and see if that solves the issue.
If your device test showed that your results were slow on one device, you need to check out that device. You can find out how to make YouTube faster on a Mac at this site: https://setapp.com/how-to/make-youtube-faster-on-mac.
Other sites have information to clean your Android and iOS devices if those devices are buffering YouTube.
Check Your Router
What happens if you find that your router is still not working after a reboot? There could be a lot of wireless traffic that can overload your account.
Start by turning off WiFi on all of your devices except for one. See if that one device can play YouTube videos without buffering. If it works, then one of your other devices is eating up your wireless bandwidth.
If it doesn’t work, you may need to upgrade the firmware or contact your service provider for a replacement.
Check With Your ISP
When all of your devices have a slow connection and connecting via ethernet is just as slow, then you’ll need to check with your ISP.
Your ISP could be overwhelmed with a lot of traffic, and they are slowing down internet traffic for everyone in your immediate area.
Our ISP may be throttling traffic from YouTube specifically. You can tell if this is the case by looking at your Stats for Nerds data. You’ll find that your network connection is great, but the buffering level is high.
That’s a sign your ISP is throttling your connection. You should contact your ISP to find out what’s going on.
Change the Video Quality
If nothing worked, then you can always downgrade the quality of streaming from YouTube. You may be trying to watch videos in 1080HD, and your connection won’t support it now.
Try to watch in 720p to see if that makes a difference. You can change the streaming quality by clicking on the three dots on the video page and select Quality.
On your phone, you can do that by tapping on the three dots and tapping on Quality.
The Last Resort
If you can’t watch videos because the buffering is so bad, you can download them. You’ll need to sign up for a YouTube premium account, though.
This service lets you watch videos ad-free and download them to watch them locally on your device. You can sign up for a 7-day free trial. After that, you’ll pay $11.99 a month.
Put an End to YouTube Video Buffering
There’s nothing more annoying than trying to watch a video and have it buffer every couple of seconds. There are ways to solve YouTube video buffering, but it takes a bit of patience.
You have to approach the problem by narrowing the cause of the problem. Once you know the cause of the buffering, it becomes much easier to speed up YouTube.
Are you ready to learn more ways to make the most of your computer? Head over to the Computer section for news, reviews, and tips.
