YouTube is one of the most frequently used video streaming sites on the internet with an estimated four billion hours of videos watched monthly. It has over two billion logged-in users worldwide and it is watched for over a billion hours each day. Regardless of this popularity, there are days when you are frustrated as a YouTube user. These are the days when your video just doesn’t load and you are left wondering ‘Why is YouTube so slow?’
With YouTube viewers increasing rapidly with each passing day, the strain on YouTube servers might cause videos to buffer slowly. However, this can’t always be the case, right? If you are facing issues with the site or YouTube App, you should try to probe into the problem, and find out whether the glitch is in your system or connection. However, it is possible that it is not even because of your connection or system problems that YouTube is not loading.
There are many reasons for YouTube to be slow. This article explores the top 5 reasons why YouTube is so slow so you can tackle the problems accordingly! We will begin with the generic problems which can cause YouTube videos to load at a slower pace with a lot of buffering, and then we will continue to probe into the issues that might be unknown to you.
Why Is YouTube So Slow – Top 5 Reasons
1. Overburdened Servers
Although YouTube servers are very technologically advanced and complex, because of the huge reach of the video streaming website, occasional server errors and burdening can occur. Now, how do you determine whether the problem that has occurred is within YouTube or it is your internet connection that is causing a mess? The answer is simple, check if other sites are working properly on your internet connection. If it is just YouTube that is not loading, then know that the problem has occurred totally on YouTube’s side.
If it is indeed a problem with the YouTube servers, you might have to decrease the quality of videos in order to get uninterrupted streaming. Choosing a lower quality setting means to set your video quality on 360p instead of 720p.
Besides this you can also try to wait for some time till the traffic wears off. The wait probably won’t be long because YouTube usually fixes loading problems as fast as possible.
2. Internet Connection Issues
The most probable answer to the question ‘why is YouTube so slow?’ lies in your internet connection and the status of your router. Most of the time, video buffering problems originate from your own internet connection.
Try restarting your router to fix this issue. To check the speed of your internet, try downloading a file that requires extensive bandwidth to get downloaded. If you have figured out that it is your internet causing the problem then you can revert to the method of playing videos on lower quality as recommended earlier.
3. Browser Caches
The internet browser you use caches everything you load for the first time so that each following load can become faster. This might sound good but eventually your browser starts being weighed down due to the accumulation of a lot of temporary data. With this load of temporary data, the browser becomes unstable which results in load times getting slower.
To solve this issue, you have to empty the cache along with other temporary files from your browser. The option to remove cache is given within the browser. After doing this, try reloading YouTube and see if it works.
4. Outdated Flash
A multimedia platform which is used for interactivity and animation is called Flash. You must know that all of YouTube videos are powered by Flash in your PC. As such, if you want to enjoy uninterrupted YouTube video streaming on your computer, get your version of Flash updated as soon as possible. You can get the recent version of Flash from Adobe’s website. Some browsers update the Flash version on their own but if yours does not, it is simple enough to do. Doing so will hopefully make your YouTube load in a flash!
5. Outdated Web Browser
Using an outdated browser on your PC can sometimes cause hurdles for you to stream YouTube Videos smoothly. An outdated browser can cause compatibility issues. To ensure better performance and a better user experience, update your browser to the latest version with latest associated plug-ins. When you keep your browser updated, it runs more smoothly and efficiently.
Whenever YouTube videos start to buffer, it is recommended that you check the version of the browser you are using. For Chrome users, in order to check the version of browser, they can click the three dots on top right corner, choose help from the dropdown menu, then go to ‘About Google Chrome’ option. Chrome will then show the version of browser you are currently using.
In case the browser has not been updated to the latest version, Google Chrome will show you the notification to update the browser. If there is no notification being shown, you are already using an updated version of the browser.
If needed, update your browser and then try playing YouTube videos. If the problem was caused due to an outdated browser, YouTube should work smoothly now.
Conclusion
To conclude, we can say that more often than not the problem lies with our internet connections and browsers. Slow YouTube streaming is not much of a problem especially when you know what to do if it ever occurs. Now, you have an answer to the question ‘why is YouTube so slow’ and you know how to fix it too!
