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Youtube doesn’t work on my MacBook Pro

T

tpcollins

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 17, 2012
171
19
Youtube doesn’t work any more on my 2013 MacBook Pro. I might have gotten carried away with deleting a bunch crap a while ago and may have deleted something I shouldn’t have.

Are there any disadvantages to downloading Google Chrome and seeing if a browser other than Safari will work? Thanks.
 
Microsoft Edge is a good alternative to google chrome; much better memory management so far on Edge and in my opinion, better privacy settings as well. Lot of ads that appear on web pages disappear if you set it to strict setting.

you can consider that browser and see if it meets your requirements.
 
tpcollins said:
Youtube doesn’t work any more on my 2013 MacBook Pro. I might have gotten carried away with deleting a bunch crap a while ago and may have deleted something I shouldn’t have.

Are there any disadvantages to downloading Google Chrome and seeing if a browser other than Safari will work? Thanks.
Click to expand...
You mean you cannot go to youtube.com? Do you have any extensions installed for Safari? Remove or update them first. Clear out Safari cache and try again.
Also update your Macbook Pro for any patches available first.

Disadvantages of downloading Google Chrome is for Google to install a kind of bloatware in your mac that might reduce performance. https://chromeisbad.com
With so many browser alternative browsers out there, no point in using Chrome.
Try any of these browsers first.

Get to Know Microsoft Edge

<p>Microsoft Edge is the AI-powered browser. A smarter way to browse. Learn more about built-in Edge features and capabilities that help you achieve more.</p>
www.microsoft.com

The browser that puts you first | Brave

The Brave browser is a fast, private and secure web browser for PC, Mac and mobile. Download now to enjoy a faster ad-free browsing experience that saves data and battery life by blocking tracking software.
brave.com

Download the fastest Firefox ever

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Chrome should be your last resort.
 
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I have the same problem with my macbook pro early 2011 running on High Sierra.

Until the day before yesterday I was able to watch videos on youtube but not anymore.

I've tried to restart, update, delete caches, reinstall adobe flash player even if is not supported anymore, tried on another browser like Brave browser and Mozilla without any difference, I still can't play videos on youtube.

I'm mostly using Chrome and Safari browsers.

Is there any other plugin for youtube videos?
 
seefees -

First, GET RID OF Adobe Flash.
You don't need it (or want) it any more.

Now... tell us WHICH VERSION OF THE OS you have running. This -might- have something to do with it.

I wouldn't use Chrome at all -- too "invasive" (they're tracking you all the time).

Other browsers to try:
- iCab
- Vivaldi
 
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Fishrrman said:
seefees -

First, GET RID OF Adobe Flash.
You don't need it (or want) it any more.

Now... tell us WHICH VERSION OF THE OS you have running. This -might- have something to do with it.

I wouldn't use Chrome at all -- too "invasive" (they're tracking you all the time).

Other browsers to try:
- iCab
- Vivaldi
Click to expand...
I'm using High Sierra 10.13.6. I got rid of adobe flash, I tried with iCab, Opera, Vivaldi browsers and there is always the same problem with youtube videos. I thought about a gpu problem but I can play videos through vlc player without any problem.
 
Last edited:
Can you tell us more specifically what happens when you try to view something on YouTube?
Do you get an error msg?
Or... something else?

A suggestion:
We're going to create a NEW, temporary "test account".
Go to the "users & groups" pref pane.
Click the lock at the bottom and enter your password.
Now click the "+" symbol to create a new account.
MAKE SURE it's "administrative" at the top.
Give it any name and password you want (but NOT your own). I suggest something simple like "temp".
When done, close users & groups and LOG OUT of your "regular" account and log into the new one.

Now open a browser, go to YouTube, and see what happens.
This may or may NOT fix things, but it's worth trying.

If you can suddenly play videos in the new account, then it's SOMETHING IN YOUR REGULAR ACCOUNT that is mucking things up.
You need to find out what it is.
 
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Fishrrman said:
Can you tell us more specifically what happens when you try to view something on YouTube?
Do you get an error msg?
Or... something else?

A suggestion:
We're going to create a NEW, temporary "test account".
Go to the "users & groups" pref pane.
Click the lock at the bottom and enter your password.
Now click the "+" symbol to create a new account.
MAKE SURE it's "administrative" at the top.
Give it any name and password you want (but NOT your own). I suggest something simple like "temp".
When done, close users & groups and LOG OUT of your "regular" account and log into the new one.

Now open a browser, go to YouTube, and see what happens.
This may or may NOT fix things, but it's worth trying.

If you can suddenly play videos in the new account, then it's SOMETHING IN YOUR REGULAR ACCOUNT that is mucking things up.
You need to find out what it is.
Click to expand...
Thanks a lot for your help! I made a test account and everything works fine!
The problem now is that I can't find what is this in my regular account which is blocking youtube videos.
When I open youtube webpage in my regular account and click on a video, the video continuously is loading without start playing.
 
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"The problem now is that I can't find what is this in my regular account which is blocking youtube videos."

In your users & groups pref pane (the one for YOUR account), what "login items" do you show?
If there's anything there, one of them might be interfering with Safari.

I don't know if you've tried the following yet, but if not, try it.
Download something called "EtreCheck". It's free.
Run EtreCheck.
See what it gives you in its report.
Pay attention to anything that shows up "in red"...
 
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Fishrrman said:
"The problem now is that I can't find what is this in my regular account which is blocking youtube videos."

In your users & groups pref pane (the one for YOUR account), what "login items" do you show?
If there's anything there, one of them might be interfering with Safari.

I don't know if you've tried the following yet, but if not, try it.
Download something called "EtreCheck". It's free.
Run EtreCheck.
See what it gives you in its report.
Pay attention to anything that shows up "in red"...
Click to expand...
In my users & groups pref pane there are no login items.

After the EtreCheck the major issues I had was an outdated backup and obsolete hardware.

I'm still searching for a solution. I'm afraid that something happened from CleanmyMac X software I had because I was using it mostly to uninstall unwanted software and improve in theory my macbooks performance.
I uninstalled CleanmyMac X and I don't use it anymore.

Thanks a lot for your patience and so precious help!!!
 
I had the same exact problem with Safari a while ago. No YouTube. It worked with Chrome, though.
Point is, though, that it didn't work on Safari no matter which the account was, so it's probably not the same issue the opener is facing.
The solution for me was to update Safari: just Safari, not Mac OS.
My current Safari version is 14.0.3 and my macOS is Catalina: for the lower OS version you might want to check if there's a pending Safari update that is compatible with High Sierra or the likes.

HTH
 
MacGralich said:
I had the same exact problem with Safari a while ago. No YouTube. It worked with Chrome, though.
Point is, though, that it didn't work on Safari no matter which the account was, so it's probably not the same issue the opener is facing.
The solution for me was to update Safari: just Safari, not Mac OS.
My current Safari version is 14.0.3 and my macOS is Catalina: for the lower OS version you might want to check if there's a pending Safari update that is compatible with High Sierra or the likes.

HTH
Click to expand...
I have tried anything like update chrome, uninstall and install it again without any luck. I'm still trying to find out what is going wrong. At the moment whenever I want to watch a youtube video I have to log in on the other user account I made according to Fishrrmans advise. Which is better than nothing :)

​

 
OP:

Tell us which version of the OS you are using.
(such as "10.11.5", etc.
Include all the digits.
 
seefees --

What you could try is to start "manually moving" stuff from your "main" (but NON working) account into the new "temp" account you created -- the one in which Safari DOES work.

Again, SOMETHING you have done in your old account is the reason Safari won't connect to YouTube.

I'm wondering if it could be an ad-blocker, some Safari preference setting, a kext file (system extension), perhaps something else.

But again, if Safari "works correctly" using the new account, but DOES NOT work with your old (main) account, then the OS itself (including Safari) is "ok".
It's YOUR ACCOUNT that has "the problem" inside...

IMPORTANT:
When you move files from one account to another, I believe you need to do this:
1. Log into old account. Take file from old account and move it to the "shared" folder.
2. Log OUT of old account and log INTO new account. Move file from shared folder to the new account.
You need to do this to avoid permissions problems.
 
Hello to everyone and thanks for every kind of help. I finally found the solution of my problem and I would like to share it with you as I discovered this is a common problem of High Sierra blocking the google services.

So the solution to this problem is to open the Keychain Access find the certificate which is blocking all google pages (In my case was the "GlobalSign Root CA" certificate) Then double click the certificate click on Trust and select always trust this certificate.

After that everything is working fine on Chrome and any other browser with youtube videos playing flawlessly again without any problem.
 
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I forgot abut this thread but somehow I kept trying different things and finally got it to work. Now if I can only remember what I did so I can do it again next . . .
 
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