You are trying to watch a YouTube video and it takes forever to load—or sometimes it just doesn’t load at all. When this happens, it’s not your internet connection that’s to blame; it’s the huge amount of traffic that YouTube sees every day, which has caused the video site to slow down significantly over the years. Here are some ways you can speed up YouTube and enjoy your favorite videos at their full potential!

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Why is youtube So Slow – Check Wifi

One reason your YouTube videos may be loading slowly is because you’re not on Wi-Fi. A good rule of thumb is to always connect to Wi-Fi when you can so you’re not using up your data. Additionally, if you’re on a slower network, it’s likely that your videos will take longer to load. 

While this won’t necessarily make the video run more smoothly or better quality, it will at least give you something to watch while the video loads. Another thing to try is turning off any apps that might be interfering with your YouTube experience – this includes any music or podcast apps as well as things like Facebook Messenger and Instagram. 

You can also minimize the amount of tabs open in your browser by shutting down any unnecessary ones before viewing a video and switching back once the video has finished playing. If you have too many browser tabs open, some pages may cause other pages to slow down due to lack of memory. Keep this in mind and close any additional windows besides the one you’re watching a video on to speed up your overall browsing experience. 

Once you’ve closed any extraneous windows, check to see if the issue persists. If not, then there are other possible reasons for the slowness – from software glitches to faulty hardware on your device itself.

Update your device’s software

One of the first things you can do to try and fix a slow YouTube experience is to make sure your device is running the latest software. Software updates often include performance improvements, so this is a good place to start. 

You may also want to try using the internet on a different device or computer if possible. If that doesn’t work, there are other steps you can take below. Before we get into those steps, however, it’s important to note that YouTube does not work with ad-blockers installed. Try turning off any extensions you have enabled for Chrome and Firefox before trying any other troubleshooting tips.

Check your memory usage

Your computer’s memory usage can have a big impact on how fast it runs. When you have a lot of programs open, your computer has to work harder and uses more memory. This can slow down your computer. 

You can check your memory usage by opening the Task Manager. Go to the Performance tab and look at the number under Memory Usage. If this number is high, it could be causing your computer to run slow. To free up some memory and make your computer faster, close any unnecessary programs or apps that are running in the background. 

  1. Close any unnecessary programs or apps that are running in the background and use up memory. To do so, go to Start and then click on Task Manager. In Task Manager, look under Performance > Memory usage. If there is an app or program using a lot of memory, right-click on it and select End task. If you have a computer with more than one user account, repeat these steps for each user account as well. 
  1. Restart your computer every once in awhile. Once every couple weeks or month, restarting your computer will help clear out any old temporary files from programs like Chrome and Firefox that may be making it run slower. 
  1. Clear up space on your hard drive if possible, which should also help improve performance. Right-click on the hard drive icon in Windows Explorer and select Properties. Click on Disk Cleanup and let it scan your computer for unused files. Select Files to delete > OK. 4. Update Windows regularly by going to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and installing all updates.

Related: How to Play Roblox on a School Chromebook

Select high quality video settings

When you are watching a YouTube video, there are several settings that can affect the quality of the video. The first setting is the resolution, which can be set to either 480p or 720p. The second setting is the bitrate, which can be set to either 1 Mbps or 2 Mbps. 

The third setting is the frame rate, which can be set to either 30 fps or 60 fps. The fourth setting is the video codec, which can be set to either H.264 or VP8. If your internet connection has enough bandwidth and CPU power, then I recommend using the highest quality possible for all four settings (720p at 60fps with H.264). If your internet connection is slower than average and/or if your CPU power is low, then use the lower qualities for each setting as needed (480p at 30fps with VP8). 

However, keep in mind that some older computers might not have the necessary hardware for higher resolutions. For example, some computers cannot play 720p videos at 60 fps because they do not have powerful graphics cards. 

There is also the option to download videos from YouTube instead of streaming them. To download a video from YouTube, click on the menu button next to watch later and select save video. After saving it, you can play it offline without an internet connection.

Change the resolution of your video

One way to fix the problem of YouTube being slow is to change the resolution of your video. This can be done by going into the settings of your video and changing the resolution from HD to SD. This will make your video load faster and play smoother. 

Another way to improve the speed of YouTube is to close any other tabs or programs that you have running in the background. This will free up your computer’s resources and allow YouTube to run more smoothly. Another way to increase the speed of YouTube is to use a different browser, such as Google Chrome. And finally, if none of these options work for you, try restarting your computer. If all else fails, contact YouTube customer service and see what they recommend.

Stop autoplay videos from loading in full

One of the reasons why YouTube might be loading slowly for you is because of all the autoplay videos that are set to load in full. 

This can quickly eat up your data allowance if you’re not careful. To stop autoplay videos from loading in full, open up YouTube in your browser and click on the three dots in the top right corner. From there, select Settings. Under the Playback tab, uncheck the box that says Autoplay next video. 

That’s it! Now your YouTube will only play a video when you press play. It’ll also save you a lot of data over time. 

The second thing that can make YouTube so slow is if you have too many tabs or windows open at once. If this is the case, close them by clicking X in the top left corner and try again. 

If none of these fixes seem to work for you then try restarting your device (such as your computer or phone) and trying again.

Choose appropriate thumbnails

One potential reason your YouTube videos are loading slowly is because you’re using the wrong thumbnail size. The correct thumbnail size for YouTube is 1280×720 pixels. If your thumbnail is too small, it will look blurry on high-definition screens and take longer to load. 

Another reason your YouTube videos may be loading slowly is because you have too many on one page. Try to limit yourself to around 20 thumbnails per page. 

This will help your pages load faster. Finally, make sure you’re using a good hosting service. If your video files are hosted on a slow server, they’ll take longer to load. 

It can also sometimes help if you use proxy servers or mirror servers to host your videos since they offer more bandwidth than other services. If you need help with any of these issues, please feel free to reach out to us! We’d love to help you make your website run as smoothly as possible. Get in touch with our team today!

Compress large images before uploading them

When you upload an image to YouTube, it is automatically compressed. However, you can further reduce the file size by compressing the image yourself before uploading it. 

This will help speed up the loading time of your video. You can compress large images with programs like Photoshop or GIMP for PC or Mac and Preview for Mac. 

The following are some tips that have been reported to improve load times: 

  • Reduce the dimensions of your original video to 640×480 (DVD quality) or less 
  • Decrease the bitrate from 1000 kbps to 500 kbps 
  • Split a long video into multiple shorter videos (10 minutes max per video) – Limit each video to 1 GB or less in size 
  • Upload only one video at a time; do not mix them together as this could cause issues when uploading. If you still have problems, try restarting your computer.

Use a VPN

A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, is a great way to improve your internet speeds. By routing your traffic through a VPN server, you can bypass any congestion or throttling that your ISP may be doing. Additionally, a VPN can encrypt your traffic, making it more secure and private. If you’re looking to improve your YouTube speeds, using a VPN is a great option. 

With a VPN, your internet data will route to one of their servers before connecting to the site you want to visit. That means that if the site gets congested with too many users at once, you’ll still have an excellent connection without experiencing lag. 

And if your ISP decides to throttle the site’s connection for some reason (like Netflix), the VPN will keep you from being affected by those restrictions! The best part about this method is that a VPN also provides security. 

You can choose which countries your traffic will go through and therefore avoid regions where governments are monitoring online activity (China, Iran). If you don’t know what type of VPN service to choose, we recommend ExpressVPN because they have a 30-day money back guarantee so you can try them out risk-free! 

They also offer reliable customer support 24/7, a variety of different encryption protocols including 256-bit AES encryption standards, and over 3100+ global servers in 145+ countries. Plus, ExpressVPN offers unlimited bandwidth so you won’t need to worry about exhausting your data allowance!

Clear cache

One reason YouTube may be loading slowly for you is that your browser is trying to load old, cached versions of the site instead of the most recent version. To fix this, you can clear your cache. This will force your browser to load the most recent version of YouTube. Here’s how to do it in three popular browsers -For Google Chrome: open the Tools menu and select Clear browsing data. 

  • For Mozilla Firefox: open the Firefox menu and select Clear Recent History. 
  • For Safari: open the Safari menu and select Empty Cache. 

When you’re done clearing your cache, quit out of your browser and then restart it. After doing so, YouTube should be much faster than before! If YouTube still seems slow, it might be because the server is down or because your internet connection isn’t fast enough. 

If you have a slow connection but have cleared your cache and tried other troubleshooting methods such as closing all tabs but one with an active stream, resetting your router, rebooting your computer or modem, updating drivers on your computer or changing network settings on a Mac, try switching to another browser like Edge or Safari which uses less bandwidth.

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