How to stop youtube from buffering
Picture this. You’re at the most exciting part of a video and all of a sudden, a never-ending buffering icon flutters on your screen. It’s undoubtedly frustrating. But don’t hit your device yet! When YouTube videos continuously buffer, it’s usually an issue with your internet connection. However, there could be other reasons for this snag, and there are ways you can fix it without getting a headache. Here’s all you need to know about how to stop YouTube from buffering.
Check Your Internet Connection
The first step to tackle buffering is to ensure you have a steady and reliable internet connection. On average, a video on YouTube requires around 3 Mbps to run smoothly if you’re watching in 720p. For a much higher resolution like 1080p, it requires up to 7 Mbps. Thus, you may want to check your internet speed, and if it isn’t up to par, you could either upgrade your bandwidth or move closer to your Wi-Fi router for optimal connectivity.
Adjust Video Resolution
Contrarily, if you can’t upgrade your internet speed, consider lowering your video quality on YouTube. Navigate to the gear icon at the bottom right corner of the video screen and choose a resolution that consumes less bandwidth. For instance, if the video plays at 1080p, try turning it down to 480p or even 240p until your video plays smoothly.
Clear Cached Data and Cookies
The cache might be substantial when you spend a lot of time on the internet, which may slow down your device’s performance. Clearing cache and cookies in your browser settings might help you resume your video without buffering. And don’t worry about important storage information; clearing caches and cookies will not affect them.
Disable Hardware Acceleration
This may not be a commonly known tip, but disabling hardware acceleration can often resolve buffering issues. Hardware acceleration is a feature that lets certain software use hardware components on your system to perform operations more efficiently than a software-level implementation. However, it may sometimes conflict with your browser, leading to buffering. Therefore, disabling this might make a significant difference.
On Chrome, you can disable hardware acceleration by navigating to Chrome settings > System > Uncheck the box next to “Use hardware acceleration when available”.
Close Other Active Apps
Running multiple apps at once can considerably chew up your bandwidth. Hence, closing any unnecessary programs or tabs that are open on your device will make more bandwidth available for YouTube, enhancing the video streaming quality and reducing buffering. Opt for a single window browsing whenever you are watching YouTube videos to ensure a smoother experience.
Try YouTube Troubleshoot
Finally, if nothing works out, YouTube itself offers a valuable tool – YouTube Troubleshoot. It will guide you through a series of potential issues that might trigger buffering and offer solutions accordingly.
Whether it’s peak internet traffic hours, a connection issue, a hardware acceleration problem, or high video resolution, a myriad of factors could cause your YouTube video to buffer. Therefore, it’s important to remember “how to stop YouTube from buffering?” inevitably varies by individual circumstances. Determining what’s causing the buffering can help you find a solution faster and return to your seamless video watching experience.
Although the idea of stopping videos from buffering seems daunting, these simple strategies can make a substantial difference. Remember, patience and a step-by-step approach are key in these situations!
