Have you been struggling with YouTube on your iPhone, computer, or smart TV of late? Don’t worry, it’s almost certainly not you or your internet connection – it’s Google’s fault.
A number of YouTube users have been taking to Reddit to report a degraded video streaming experience. YouTube videos have been inexplicably defaulting to lower quality settings, dropping as low as 144p.
In such scenarios, switching to a higher streaming quality like 1080p or (heaven forbid) 4K has tended to result in excessive buffering, or else sees the app switching back to a lower quality.
As Android Authority notes, the issue seems to predominantly be affecting iOS users, as well as those watching on desktop web browsers and those on the YouTube smart TV app. Android users appear to be relatively unaffected.
Some have suggested that these issues started to occur immediately following an update to the YouTube iOS app around a week ago.
Apple, Youtube
Google cops to YouTube issue
Thankfully, Google has now commented on this streaming problem with its popular video service.
Over on Google’s YouTube support page, a member of Google’s YouTube team has listed “Video and Shorts Playing in Low Quality on iOS” as a Known Issue.
While it’s listed here as an iOS problem, one of the following symptom-diagnosing bullet points mentions that both desktop and Smart TVs are also implicated.
The Google rep then assures its users that the company is “actively looking into this” problem, and promises to update the support thread when more is known. Stay tuned for a (hopefully imminent) app update, in other words.
Author: Jon Mundy, Contributor, Tech Advisor
Jon is a freelance journalist who got his start covering mobile games at the dawn of the App Store. He has since covered everything from smart home tech and laptops to food and culture, but always seems to return to his fascination with smartphones.