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Resolved YouTube not working on Safari?

deannnnn

deannnnn

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jun 4, 2007
2,097
637
New York City
Hey guys,

Strange problem. For whatever reason, YouTube has stopped working on Safari. Instead of playing videos on the site, it just shows a black box where the video should be.

rcMXO.png


It doesn't seem like a Flash problem since flash ads on YouTube still work, and flash videos on other sites still work, including embedded YouTube videos.

Flash, Mac OSX, and Safari are all 100% up to date, and I just reinstalled Flash to be sure.

Also, YouTube works no problems on Chrome.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
 
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Portnull said:
Same thing here. First I thought it had to do with unreliable extensions, which I never use, but even switching the extensions off entirely doesn't help.

What's strange, it's only on links to YouTube videos like these that it doesn't work. If I click on a user channel and select one of the videos there, it works without problems.

So, not like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC3IryWr4c8

But like this:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ibm#p/search/5/FC3IryWr4c8
Click to expand...

I hadn't noticed that but it's exactly the same for me. Glad I'm not alone, maybe it's a YouTube issue.
 
This tweet suggests that switching Safari into 32-bit mode solves the problem. I tried it and it works... but obviously not an ideal solution.
 
A possible cause found!

Same here, but I think I found a possible solution: turn off YouTube5 extension!! (sorry folks, if you never installed it, this solution isn't for you)

I have "YouTube video downloader 1.1.4" and "YouTube5 2.2.1" extensions installed (only 2). When I switched YouTube5 off, all YouTube videos played normally again.

When on, only videos in channels play, just as 'deannnnn' experienced. Embedded videos would only have audio, not video.

Hope this works.

But still, NOT AN IDEAL SOLUTION. :(
 
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weimings said:
Same here, but I think I found a possible solution: turn off YouTube5 extension!! (sorry folks, if you never installed it, this solution isn't for you)
Click to expand...

I tried this yesterday, but the only thing different is that now I don't get a blank rectangle doing nothing, but a black one.

Switching to 32-bit worked. I'll keep it like this until there's a proper solution.
 
I found that if I enabled the Develop menu and changed my user agent to something other than Safari 5.0.3 Mac (or the Default) then Youtube would play correctly. I changed mine to Safari 5.0.3 Windows and the videos started working.

I'm wondering if the problem is on Youtube's side.. ie.. if they are checking user agent strings and not allowing the video to show on certain players.

This might also be why the AppleTV isn't working correctly.. at least mine isn't. I can't get my subscriptions to play on it for some strange reason.

Anyways, just my input.

doug-
 
this might be the solution to your problem

System configuration:
Safari Version 5.0.3 (6533.19.4), Mac OSX 10.6.6

My wife's computer suffered the same problem and I managed to compare her settings with my MacBook and I noticed that safari had an unwanted plugin with .exe format that was preventing youtube to automatically load its videos.

the plugin was: NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave

After removing it safari it all went back to normal again.

to check your plugins:
goto safari/help/installed plugins

Understanding the Safari Plug-ins List

Plug-ins are actually files within files. Safari groups plug-ins by the file that contains the small programs. An example that just about every Mac Safari user will see on the Installed Plug-ins page is the QuickTime plug-in. A single file called QuickTime Plugin.plugin provides the code that runs QuickTime, but it’s actually made up of dozens of individual codecs for playing back various types of content. (Short for coder/decoder, a codec compresses or decompresses voice or audio signals.)

Other types of plug-ins you’ll probably see include Java Plug-in for Cocoa, Shockwave Flash, and Quartz Composer. If you want to remove a plug-in, you need to know its file name. To find this information, look through the plug-in descriptions on the Installed Plug-ins list. For example, to remove the Shockwave or Flash plug-in, look for a Shockwave Flash entry in the Description column for the Flash Player.plugin. Once you know the file name, you can remove the plug-in file; this will uninstall the plug-in from Safari.

How to remove unwanted plugins

Safari stores its plug-in files in one of two locations. The first location is /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/. This location contains plug-ins that are available to all users of your Mac, and is where you will find most plug-ins. The second location is your home directory’s Library folder at ~/Library/Internet Plug-ins/. The tilde (~) in the pathname is a shortcut for your user account name. For example, if your user account name is Tom, the full pathname would be /Tom/Library/Internet Plug-ins. This location holds plug-ins that Safari only loads when you log in to your Mac.

To remove a plug-in, use the Finder to go to the appropriate location and drag the file whose name matches the description entry in the Installed Plug-ins page to the Trash. If you want to save the plug-in for possible later use, you can drag the file to another location on your Mac, perhaps a folder called Disabled Plug-ins that you create in your home directory. If you change your mind later and want to reinstall the plug-in, just drag the file back to its original location.

After you remove a plug-in by moving it to the Trash or another folder, you’ll need to restart Safari for the change to take effect.


I hope it helps for you as well
 
Not working this solution

After have done what is recommended here, this issue is not just not resolved but safari even stop working, I had to put the "shockwave plugin" back to the plugins folder and the problem...still there :confused: anyone with a solution?:(
I was using the "develop menu solution" but now stop working too, the videos don't work just on youtube's site, embedded videos work normally in safari and any other browser
 
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I'm not sure if this will help, but I used to have a similar problem with other video services like Hulu and Yahoo. Their videos would never play, but Youtube did. And to make things even weirder, I never had problems if I used Firefox or Chrome.


Anyway, I reinstalled Flash and uninstalled it many times with no luck. I finally was able to narrow it down to some sort of incompatibility between 64-bit mode and 32-bit mode in Flash with Safari. I run everything in 64-bit mode, but I guess Flash was in 32-bit mode or something. I went to the Get Info window of Safari (right click Safari> Get Info) and ticked the "Open in 32-bit mode" and it worked. Now all my videos on all services work.

Hope this helps.
 
am using safari 5.0.4

have changed it to 32-bit as suggested above. youtube still not working for me :confused::confused:

there is an additional box underneath 'run in 32-bit mode' which is 'run using rosetta'

do i tick that as well? or just the 32-bit one?

edit: tried with 'run using rosetta', still not working. nothing works at the moment.

everything seems to be going wrong with the recent iOS and MacOS updates. my Gmail on my ip4 keeps rejecting my password as well. everything was fine before.
 
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Solved

unicolondon solution worked on this computer-MBP 17in OS 10.6.8, 2.66 Ghz, 4GB, 1067, DDR3 (in case you wanted all the details). I found the file as unicolondon describe. I put the file in the disabled plug-ins folder, RESTARTED Safari and viola, YouTube plays again. I would be interested to know why this just now became a problem. This this plug in has been with me since 2006... at least according to the Get Info on the file itself.

Any way- thanks unicolondon!
 
Is this still a widespread issue for people? I went back to Safari and Youtube is not working for me. What's going on? Why hasn't this been fixed in the meantime? I'm on Safari 5.1.1. Thanks.
 
Commodore said:
Is this still a widespread issue for people? I went back to Safari and Youtube is not working for me. What's going on? Why hasn't this been fixed in the meantime? I'm on Safari 5.1.1. Thanks.
Click to expand...
I don't know why this suddenly became an issue (again?), but I never saw it before today. And while I'm not a very big user of YouTube, I'd have thought I'd have noticed something like this before if it were there. Then again, I only recently bothered to upgrade to Snow Leopard on this machine (Usually I don't wait this long to move to the "next OS", but I like to keep a bit behind the upgrade curve so I'm not bitten by the "early adopter" bugs -- I'll wait a while longer for Lion, especially since many apps still are reportedly not yet fully stable for Lion and I don't want to have to pay for upgrades to a number of apps I don't really need to upgrade, but which might not run on Lion and work just fine on Snow Leopard -- another reason I usually wait till there are many apps that just are no longer being supported and updated for "my current OS version"; then I KNOW it's time to upgrade ;-) ).

Anyway, deleting the aforementioned plugin: NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave, which apparently was migrated from an older PPC-based machine, seemed to do the trick. After restarting Safari, my browser is working normally. BTW, I also deleted all older plugins from that folder... anything more than about 3 years old. Most, if not all of them, should be obsolete by now.
 
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Fixed

I followed unicolondon's suggestion and trashed the plugin he mentioned. That was the fix. Thank you!!!
 
LMonty said:
I don't know why this suddenly became an issue (again?), but I never saw it before today. And while I'm not a very big user of YouTube, I'd have thought I'd have noticed something like this before if it were there. Then again, I only recently bothered to upgrade to Snow Leopard on this machine (Usually I don't wait this long to move to the "next OS", but I like to keep a bit behind the upgrade curve so I'm not bitten by the "early adopter" bugs -- I'll wait a while longer for Lion, especially since many apps still are reportedly not yet fully stable for Lion and I don't want to have to pay for upgrades to a number of apps I don't really need to upgrade, but which might not run on Lion and work just fine on Snow Leopard -- another reason I usually wait till there are many apps that just are no longer being supported and updated for "my current OS version"; then I KNOW it's time to upgrade ;-) ).

Anyway, deleting the aforementioned plugin: NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave, which apparently was migrated from an older PPC-based machine, seemed to do the trick. After restarting Safari, my browser is working normally. BTW, I also deleted all older plugins from that folder... anything more than about 3 years old. Most, if not all of them, should be obsolete by now.
Click to expand...

I just started having this issue like 4 hours ago. I tried resetting Safari and restarting my computer, but to no avail. Also, I don't have the NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave plugin, so that's not the issue. What else could it be? Can you help me out?
 
The Californian said:
Agreed, I believe it's happening again.
Click to expand...

It kind of seems like it started in February, then resurfaced in October. Or at least that's when all the forums/help websites were most active regarding this issue.

Weird thing is, the videos will work on a channel's page (e.g.: http://www.youtube.com/user/EpicMealTime) but not on the individual video's page (e.g.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2MUYs9mw9o&feature=topvideos_entertainment).

Most everyone seems to be able to fix it by changing Safari to 32-bit mode, but I'm not willing to do that.
 
I started having this problem with YouTube today under Safari 5.1.1. Just downloaded the latest version of Flash but it makes no difference.

YouTube works OK under Firefox
 
Try this

I just ran across this fix on another forum and it works for me.

Go to Safari > Preference > Privacy > Remove all website data

Hopefully this will work for other people too! Good luck!
 
angad19 said:
I just ran across this fix on another forum and it works for me.

Go to Safari > Preference > Privacy > Remove all website data

Hopefully this will work for other people too! Good luck!
Click to expand...

Yes, that worked for me, thanks!

I wonder if this is a new routine which will have to be executed on a regular basis?
 
Problem seems to be a single cookie

Instead of losing all your good and bad cookies with "Remove All Website Data" button, you can just kill the one cookie that seems to cause this problem:

Select Safari > Preference > Privacy > Details

Search for Youtube

Delete the cookie called youtube-nocookie.com then click Done.

Restart Safari and try again.

Worked for me - Hope it helps for you.

P.S. I see that cookie gets recreated when you log back in to YouTube, but the videos still work.
 
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