5 Ways to Fix 'Videos Not Playing on iPhone' Problem

Reason #1: Frequently, you may find your videos play without a problem on your Android phone or other mobile devices, but your iPhone won't play the videos or the files won't show up in your iPhone. The most probable cause is that the videos are in the formats that are unrecognized by your iPhone.
Solution:
You need to convert videos into a format that the iPhone can play. Generally, iPhone plays videos in H.264 & MPEG4 in .m4v, .mov, .mp4 file formats. You can check the full list of iPhone supported audio/video formats. If the video files are not in the list, please resort to video converters like MacX Video Converter Pro to do some transcoding beforehand.

Free download the Mac video converter (or for Windows) - Load video - Choose iPhone 11/11 Pro (Max)/XS/XS Max/XR/X/8/7 as output format - RUN!

Reason #2: In most cases, if you find your YouTube videos on iPhone not playing with a message "playback error tap to retry", you shall be aware that this arises from other apps or low memory. Rebooting your device helps to fix the issue.
Solution: To get rid of the problem, just press and hold the sleep/wake button until the red slider shows up, drag it and turn off your iPhone. Then press the button to turn on it.

Reason #3: Cache and cookies are also responsible for iPhone won't play videos online issue. If so, clearing them can solve the problem and even speed up iPhone , so that you will be able to watch videos on your iPhone fast without any interruption.
Solution: Go to Settings, Safari. To clear all the cookies, click on Clear Cookies. In order to clear the cache, tap Clear Cache. Check the solution if your YouTube videos not working on iPhone >>

Reason #4: Some faulty apps may also bring about iPhone videos not playing error. So to delete the possible faulty apps you have installed recently may help tackle the issue. Note: Uninstalling some apps also help to free up iPhone storage.
Solution: Navigate the app on the home screen, press on the icon until an X shape appears, click on it to delete the app.

Reason #5: Check if the videos are corrupt or damaged. Mostly, corrupted videos cannot be played on iPhone, which may hang or freeze constantly in the middle of a particular video. If you've ever faced with the same problem, just follow the tips below.
Solution:
* Delete the damaged or corrupted video file if the iPhone playback error happens with a particular video.
* Repair corrupted video files before playing using a video repair tool;
* Remove the corrupted sector using a iPhone video editor.
* Download the correct videos that work fine with iPhone. See how to download full-length movies to iPhone (11/11 Pro (Max)/XS/XS Max/XR/8/7/6S included).

Note: If multiple videos are not playing on iPhone from different sources, you can restoring your iPhone as this helps in many situations. This is also the last option for you to solve videos not playing on iPhone problem since restoring iPhone will delete all the data on it. So make sure to backup data to iPhone before restoring it.

Step 1: Import the Videos That Are Not Playing on iPhone.
Tap the Add Video button to add the video you cannot play on iPhone after you launch the iPhone video converter. Batch video converting is supported. You can add more than one video file at once.

Step 2: Choose the Output iPhone Profile.
When a pop-up window of Output Profile appears, you can go to Apple Device -> to iPhone Video -> select the specific iPhone model such as iPhone 11/11 Pro (Max)/XS/XS Max/XR/8/7/6S as the output format.

Note: There are still other preset profiles listed, including iPhone 11/11 Pro (Max)/XS/XS Max/XR, iPad Pro, Samsung Galaxy, iTunes, Apple TV, etc. Plus, it's great regarding to its video editing feature. You can cut off the corrupted video clips to repair the slightly corrected file if the video won't play on iPhone.

Step 3: Start iPhone Video Conversion.
Tap the Browse button to save the video in the destination folder and tap RUN button to start converting videos to iPhone. After the conversion, you can sync the video to iPhone and then even play HEVC video on iPhone without trouble.

Author: Abby Poole | Updated on July 2, 2020