I have a weird problem on my iPhone 5, Youtube videos will not play over wifi, not just my home wifi, but i've tried about 4 different wifi's and it just won't play. I've restored the phone, i've tried using safari, the official youtube app and Jasmine. I've tried messed around with my home router channels and swapping between b/g/n and still no luck. If I turn the wifi off on the phone and just use 4g or LTE it loads right up. I power cycled the phone Ive done a hard reset. Any other ideas?
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iPhone 5/Youtube/wifi problem
- Thread starter Hevi
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I don't have any ideas, but a similar situation. For me videos won't play on the App. On occasion Safari YT freezes at about the 30 second mark over WiFi. Other times they play fine over WiFi.
I have the same problem. It won't buffer youtube videos on my wifi even though speedtest.net says I'm getting 20 down (and everything else downloads fast). The second I use LTE or turn off wifi and back on it will buffer fine.
I am experiencing the same problem. I have also noticed that other videos are much slower to stream over WiFi than HSPA+ (despite faster WiFi speeds, confirmed by a speedtest), though other videos do at least seem to buffer occasionally. As with OP, YouTube videos sometimes never play at all. Other times, they play for a few seconds and then stop indefinitely, and fail to ever buffer. However, over WiFi, The problem is consistent. YouTube videos always fail to play at some point within the first several seconds, but play just fine over cellular. I've tried all of the aforementioned different options for viewing YouTube videos.
I have manually set my DNS to no avail. The reason for my post is to suggest that anyone else having this problem try manually setting their DNS, maybe you'll get lucky (though I understand that the problem we are experiencing has nothing to do with DNS setting since our WiFi speeds are consistently good, the issue is only with YouTube, or in my case, video in general).
I have manually set my DNS to no avail. The reason for my post is to suggest that anyone else having this problem try manually setting their DNS, maybe you'll get lucky (though I understand that the problem we are experiencing has nothing to do with DNS setting since our WiFi speeds are consistently good, the issue is only with YouTube, or in my case, video in general).
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Update: I figured out a solution. We'll see if it holds up, but hopefully it will work for everyone else as well. I'll just explain what I did in the order that I did it. Since YouTube and other videos in QuickTime and Safari are working perfectly for me now, I have no way of knowing whether all if these steps are essential.
I'll post quick steps at the end of this post, but I'm posting the entire explanation in case it helps anyone to figure out the problem, in case it should return, or help anyone else think of solutions to their problems if this does not work for them.
First, I should note that for some reason I started experiencing the exact same problems over cellular, ironically today (ironic because I've had problems with YouTube over WiFi since September 21, day 1, and video over cellular always worked perfectly until I posted about the WiFi issue-there's a lesson about not bitching and being grateful for what you have, somewhere in there). So, turning off WiFi was no longer a solution. I turned WiFi back on, and still had the same problems, couldn't play video. So, it looked like I was going to be making a trip to the Apple Store, as I was unable to watch video at all.
I decided to keep WiFi on and disable cellular data, and it worked. The same video that I was unable to watch over WiFi or cellular was now playing over WiFi with no pausing or buffering. I tried other videos including videos I had watched and videos I had never watched before to confirm.
Great, so now I had WiFi, but was going to have to disable cellular data every time I wanted to watch a video, and re-enable it for when I need a data connection and am outside of WiFi.
But, to my surprise, I re-enabled cellular data and now video works (through QuickTime/Safari and the YouTube app) both on WiFi and cellular. My guess is that either there was some sort of interference between cellular and WiFi (like maybe something similar to the Verizon WiFi bug in iOS6 where people were mistakenly being charged cellular data while on WiFi, obviously cellular data was also functioning while on WiFi, either in a duplicate capacity, or just sending data usage to Verizon-I am on AT&T), or maybe turning off cellular data cleared some sort of corrupt cache, or something of that nature.
Hope this helps, here are the quick steps (as I said, I have no way of knowing if all of these are essential-likely only steps 6-8 while on WiFi are necessary):
1. Enable WiFi and Cellular Data (I assume that you have both enabled by default).
2. Disable Wifi - Settings>WiFi, choose Off.
3. Try watching YouTube Video.
4. Enable WiFi (same step as 2, choose On).
5. Try watching YouTube Video.
6. Disable Cellular Data - Settings>General>Cellular, choose Cellular Data Off.
7. Try watching YouTube Video. Now, it should work on WiFi (or, at least it did for me).
8. Turn on Cellular Data (same as step 6, choose Cellular Data On.
9. Enjoy porn.
I'll post quick steps at the end of this post, but I'm posting the entire explanation in case it helps anyone to figure out the problem, in case it should return, or help anyone else think of solutions to their problems if this does not work for them.
First, I should note that for some reason I started experiencing the exact same problems over cellular, ironically today (ironic because I've had problems with YouTube over WiFi since September 21, day 1, and video over cellular always worked perfectly until I posted about the WiFi issue-there's a lesson about not bitching and being grateful for what you have, somewhere in there). So, turning off WiFi was no longer a solution. I turned WiFi back on, and still had the same problems, couldn't play video. So, it looked like I was going to be making a trip to the Apple Store, as I was unable to watch video at all.
I decided to keep WiFi on and disable cellular data, and it worked. The same video that I was unable to watch over WiFi or cellular was now playing over WiFi with no pausing or buffering. I tried other videos including videos I had watched and videos I had never watched before to confirm.
Great, so now I had WiFi, but was going to have to disable cellular data every time I wanted to watch a video, and re-enable it for when I need a data connection and am outside of WiFi.
But, to my surprise, I re-enabled cellular data and now video works (through QuickTime/Safari and the YouTube app) both on WiFi and cellular. My guess is that either there was some sort of interference between cellular and WiFi (like maybe something similar to the Verizon WiFi bug in iOS6 where people were mistakenly being charged cellular data while on WiFi, obviously cellular data was also functioning while on WiFi, either in a duplicate capacity, or just sending data usage to Verizon-I am on AT&T), or maybe turning off cellular data cleared some sort of corrupt cache, or something of that nature.
Hope this helps, here are the quick steps (as I said, I have no way of knowing if all of these are essential-likely only steps 6-8 while on WiFi are necessary):
1. Enable WiFi and Cellular Data (I assume that you have both enabled by default).
2. Disable Wifi - Settings>WiFi, choose Off.
3. Try watching YouTube Video.
4. Enable WiFi (same step as 2, choose On).
5. Try watching YouTube Video.
6. Disable Cellular Data - Settings>General>Cellular, choose Cellular Data Off.
7. Try watching YouTube Video. Now, it should work on WiFi (or, at least it did for me).
8. Turn on Cellular Data (same as step 6, choose Cellular Data On.
9. Enjoy porn.
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This thread is EXACTLY my problem. I haven't noticed any other wifi issues with the i5 and don't have slow speedtest.net speeds like much of what has been reported on the net.
However when I try to watch a youtube video from the app or from alien blue, about 1/3 of the time it won't load at all. I have to go back out and enter the video again and then usually it will work.
My wife's i5, here old i4, and our iPad2 do not exhibit the issue.
I tried turning off cellular data and then turning it on, as the post above me suggests but it didn't help. I can still scroll down the same list of youtube videos in the app and about 1/3 of the time a video won't load.
Any other suggestions?
However when I try to watch a youtube video from the app or from alien blue, about 1/3 of the time it won't load at all. I have to go back out and enter the video again and then usually it will work.
My wife's i5, here old i4, and our iPad2 do not exhibit the issue.
I tried turning off cellular data and then turning it on, as the post above me suggests but it didn't help. I can still scroll down the same list of youtube videos in the app and about 1/3 of the time a video won't load.
Any other suggestions?
Could be one of 3 things
1. Your wifi chip is bad
2. Your OS is bad
3. it's trying to use celluar data and wifi and it gets confused.
Try a restore and if that doesn't work it's either your home wifi or looks like you'll be making a trip to the apple store
1. Your wifi chip is bad
2. Your OS is bad
3. it's trying to use celluar data and wifi and it gets confused.
Try a restore and if that doesn't work it's either your home wifi or looks like you'll be making a trip to the apple store
What youtube clips are you trying to play? There are lots of copyrighted clips (music videos, tv show clips, etc) that block mobile playback.
I am going to try the tests at work tomorrow to confirm if it is at all related to my home network.
As for 3, turning off cellular data, didn't change the behavior so I think that one is unlikely.
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Sorry, that would be pretty obvious. It gives you a message saying such.
As a test, I go into the app and then select autos and vehicles section and play all the videos on the first couple of screens. On my iPad, i4, and wife's i5, none of them ever fail and they all start almost immediately. The exact same videos on my i5 fail about 30% of the time. In addition the same page of videos load 100% of the time when on LTE.
Definitely not a content issue.
Most likely an OS issue. The hardware can't do that. It seems like the OS shipped with the phone isn't the exact final version. Restore it or try reset network settings.
Shoot I had thought about reset network settings but had forgotten to do it. That actually seems to have temporarily fixed it. 1 run though the same videos pages and no fails so far. I'll keep testing it.
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I'm not sure but I've definitely seen text boxes come up saying the "content provider has chosen not to make this video available on mobile"
Also, when I get these failures, I just get the spinning loading wheel until it says general error.
Mine buffers on wifi when I'm watching live http streaming but on LTE and 4g it works fine,, the live video that is
Something I noticed about watching YT videos with iP5. Many videos I attempt to watch on my home WiFi (up to 12 Mbps down) will freeze somewhere within about 30 seconds. The videos will continue to download slowly, however I usually loose patience with it and move on.
Today when a video froze, I set the phone aside to allow the video to slowly load. The phone locked itself after 5 minutes. When I woke the phone up the video began to download at a watchable rate.
I attempted to watch a few more videos. Two of them froze. When this occurred I locked the screen, woke it back up and the videos then began to download at what seemed to be a normal speed.
Today when a video froze, I set the phone aside to allow the video to slowly load. The phone locked itself after 5 minutes. When I woke the phone up the video began to download at a watchable rate.
I attempted to watch a few more videos. Two of them froze. When this occurred I locked the screen, woke it back up and the videos then began to download at what seemed to be a normal speed.
I thought I read about this before. I had the same issue on iphone5. I believe the explanation was when you try to view youtube movies over Wifi, then the phone is trying to download the higher resolution source. When you turn Wifi off and switch to cellular, this switches over to compress movie data, yielding a smaller file and a movie that downloads fasters and with little to no interruption.
Not sure if this will help but read this before: go to
setting >>Wi-Fi>>choose your wifi network >> Change DNS to 8.8.8.8
Not sure if this will help but read this before: go to
setting >>Wi-Fi>>choose your wifi network >> Change DNS to 8.8.8.8