YouTube Not Working
Problems
Tips and Tricksto Improve YouTube Viewing Experience

YouTube is the world's No.1 video giant with a vast array of sources, be it videos, movies, music or TV shows. But while people are indulging in its unlimited resources, they are also enduring constant problems of YouTube not working on PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad or Android for difference reasons. The help center will guide you to troubleshoot the YouTube down problem one by one.

The first step is to check your internet connection in case of the problem with YouTube stopped working. A smooth video viewing experience relies on a fast internet connection. Generally, for a 1080p YouTube video, it uses up 15.96 MB of the Internet data, three times as much as a video shown in 480p. So you need to speed up your Internet up to 18 Mbps to solve the YouTube problems. If bandwidth consumption is what you concern most, you'd better download YouTube videos with a free video downloader to save YouTube videos to Mac, PC or iOS/Android devices instead of online watching.

The browser cache, aka temporary internet files on your browse, may causes the YouTube problems playing videos, especially when it is full. And to empty it will solve the YouTube error.
1. For IE, go to Tools -> Setting menu -> Safety -> Delete Browsing History.
2. For Firefox, go to the menu in the top left corner -> tap the right arrow next to History -> click Clear Recent History.
3. For Chrome, open the Tools menu -> Options -> Under the Hood tab -> Clear Browsing data.
4. For Safari, navigate to settings -> Safari -> touch the clear cookies section -> empty the browser cache by tapping clear cache. This is typical case on Mac OS. You can also turn to the YouTube not working on Mac for more tips.

HTML5 video has the tendency to replace Adobe Flash, but this seems to be a long way to go in particular for the YouTube videos, most of which requires Adobe Flash Player plugin rather than HTML5. For the browsers except for Chrome that has the Adobe Flash Player plugin preinstalled and updates it regularly, make sure to do the following tips to avoid any YouTube playing error.
1. Have a Flash Player installed on your computer or mobile.
2. Update your flash player to the latest stable version.

Streaming video on YouTube allows viewers to watch video instantly but the YouTube buffering or loading problem can be its Achilles' heel on the other hand. If the YouTube videos you are watching are slow to load or buffer on your computer, you can just have the YouTube problems resolved and make YouTube videos load/buffer faster by following the YouTube tips and tricks below.

A practical fix for YouTube buffering problem is to change the Wi-Fi setting, which makes a huge difference regarding to video loading or buffering on YouTube.
Go into Setting -> Wi-Fi -> Settings -> Advanced and uncheck Wi-Fi optimization.

Frankly, rather than being played from YouTube, video is played from Content Delivery Networks (aka CDN) that the content was cached previously and stored. So the first step to speed up your YouTube buffering issue is to block the IP address ranges to avoid CDNs and make your video buffer from the YouTube server.
1. For Windows users, please open Command Prompt -> copy and paste the code into the window: netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="YouTubeTweak" dir=in action=block remoteip=173.194.55.0/24,206.111.0.0/16 enable=yes -> tap Enter -> close Command Prompt -> restart your browser and internet connection.
2. For Mac users, open the Terminal -> Enter the code: sudo ipfw add reject src-ip 173.194.55.0/24 in -> tap Enter -> input your admin password -> Enter the code: sudo ipfw add reject src-ip 206.111.0.0/16 in -> tap Enter -> close Terminal.

Understanding not everyone has a fast internet connection, YouTube provides an opt-in feature YouTube Feather that caters to stop YouTube videos buffering or loading. So problem with YouTube buffer or load is a headache for you, don't hesitate and follow the guide below:
Enter the url: youtube.com/feather_beta -> tap Join the "Feather" Beta -> Watch video with improved YouTube buffering.

High-quality video watching is usually bound to heavy bandwidth usage and leads to video buffering constantly if having a slow internet connection. So tweaking the video quality to a lower resolution, e.g. 4k to 1080p, 1080p to 720p, can be a big help for the playback errors or the YouTube problems with buffering.
Tap the Setting button in the right corner -> click the quality -> set the resolution to 480p or below.

While you are playing YouTube videos, another one of the most common YouTube problems is that the YouTube sound is not working. Some problems of no sound on YouTube, owing to the copyrighted audio track in the YouTube video or a recent code change by Google, can never be fixed until Google fixes it. But if the no sound on YouTube error is caused by some other reasons, just check the steps below:

Go to other online video sites like Dailymotion to see if there is sound while playing videos. In case all the other videos play with sound except that there is no sound when playing YouTube videos, then the sound card does work and you have to check other reasons for the YouTube no sound error.

The problem with YouTube no sound can be caused by your careless mistaking like forgetting to turn on the sound. So you need to go to the computer controls -> click on the speaker to see if there's an X that means the volume has been muted -> Click the X to unlock the sound if so. Lisewise, please click on the X if it shows on your YouTube video.

The issue of no sound when playing YouTube video appears when you are using the elder version of Adobe Flash player. If so, please download the latest one. If you just update the flash player and have the no sound on YouTube problems, note that the latest Flash player may have the volume slider turned down. This is also helpful to fix some YouTube errors with sound.

Perhaps YouTube videos not playing, such as YouTube videos not working or get stuck, is the most common YouTube problem that you've encountered either with YouTube app or on Chrome, Firefox, Safari or IE. If you do get YouTube down error message: Playback error tap to retry after a series of changes like firewall setting adjustment, please take a look at the following YouTube tips to get a fix of YouTube videos won't play issue.

Step 1: Install the latest and stable version of flash player and browser

Step 2: Check if the Firewall blocks the Flash content

Step 3: Clear caches and browsing history

Step 4: Make sure to turn on JavaScript

Step 5: Ensure a fast internet connection

Step 6: Check the upload traffic, if it is heavy, wait and uploading the video later

Step 7: Encode your video in a YouTube supported video format with a video converter.

Solutions to YouTube black screen problem scatter all over the internet, most of which are one-sided. But you can find all the troubleshooting steps that work for you if you are stacked with such kind of YouTube problems.

Step 1. Uninstall and reinstall the latest version of Adobe Flash player

Step 2. Clear your browser's cache, exit the browser and restart it as some users reported that the YouTube black screen disappears upon clearing the browser data.

Step 3. Disable graphics/flash hardware acceleration. You can right click the video area -> choose the Settings -> Unselect Enable hardware acceleration -> click the Close button.

Step 4. Disable HTML5 YouTube setting. Firefox shows black screen especially when playing YouTube video using HTML5 player which is YouTube's default player now. So you are suggested to install an extension to force YouTube use Flash as the player as workaround in case of the black problem problem on YouTube caused by HTML5 player.

Step 5. Turn on the JavaScript of your browser to get quick fix of YouTube problems if none of these solutions are helpful.

Pretty of YouTube guys have experienced the YouTube problem when click on a YouTube video - "an error occured, please try again later". Sometimes, clearing cookies, updating Adobe flash player, enabling java script or updating firefox may get YouTube videos playable again. But most often, you will fail even with all the steps tried. No worry about the YouTube error at all. Follow the steps below to solve the problem.

Step 1: Change your DNS to Google's public DNS 8.8.8.8.
Step 2. Disable shockwave Flash player and use the HTML5 player.
Step 3. Adjust the quality of video or change the resolution (720p, 480p or 360p).
Step 4. Right click on the player and select Global Settings > go to storage and delete.

When you play a YouTube video on your computer, it's choppy, skippy or jerky. This is one of the most common YouTube problems due to the slow internet connection, since no enough realtime to buffer the video you are watching. Another reason is the hardware that attributes to the YouTube choppy issue. For example, you are still using the computer you bought several years ago, with little RAM or bad processor. The last but not least. The web browser settings can the problems with YouTube choppy video playback. So take a look below and solve the YouTube error.

Step 1: Resort to the faster internet connection.
Step 2: Try another browser (Firefox, Chrome or Internet Explorer) to see if the YouTube playback is better.
Step 3: Update Adobe Flash to the latest version.
Step 4: Download YouTube videos to your computer and watch them offline.
Step 5: Lower the video resolution.
Step 6: Go to HTML5 video.

If you live in a country like China, Pakistan, you will probably get an YouTube problem named "this video is not available in your country". Also, you can watch BBC videos on YouTube outside UK or enjoy a movie uploaded to YouTube by Warner Bros outside US. This is because YouTube is blocked by some of the countries ISPs following the government orders. So when you access to YouTube from a blocked country IP, you will get the YouTube issue. So how to fix it.

1. Free download Hola Extension that changes your IP location for free and activate it.
2. Find the URL of the YouTube video you are unable to access.
3. Click on Hola Extension icon on the Bookmarks bar till you see different country flags here.
4. Select United State and replay the YouTube video.

This is the most feasible way to solve the YouTube problem.

You can use free VPN FinchVPN that supports up to 3GB usage per month. Just change the VPN location from settings based on YouTube video location. Then you can watch the blocked video on YouTube without any hassle.

There are times YouTube behaves just as the video was finished, but it ends up to 30 seconds early, when you watch it on computer, iPhone, PS4, School, desktop, etc. Even when you tried it on a couple of different browsers, uninstall Adobe Flash Player, clear cache, reset internet explorer settings, update graphics driver, etc, you have no luck.

Actually, it's on YouTube's end. Anyone having a good understanding of development process to the IT industry may know there are buggy moment within the process. So users may suffer from the process. It is completely out of your control. So even when you tried all the steps above. It still doesn't work. Just wait a few days and see if the developer fixes the YouTube problem itself.

YouTube videos are stretched or displayed with black bars on screen, which gives you a bad watching experience. This can be attribute to various reasons. For example, if the resource video's aspect ratio is 4:3, when you are uploading it to YouTube with 16:9 aspect ratio, you can see the vertical black bars. Don't worry, you can get rid of the YouTube problem and remove the black bars from YouTube videos by following the steps below.

Step 1: Just sign in YouTube channel > click on your profile picture > crate studio > video manager > videos > Edit > go to info and settings > basic infor and enter the tag field. Here are the YouTube formatting tags:

yt:quality=high - Play video in HD by default.
yt:crop=16:9 - get rid of the borders around video by zooming in on the video.
yt:stretch=16:9 - Stretch the video in 16:9 aspect ratio, which is used for viewing video in widescreen display.
yt:stretch=4:3 - Scale down the video 4:3 aspect ratio.

Step 2: Rely on some video editing software like to change the aspect ratio or crop YouTube video to remove the black bars from the video.