4 Ways to Fix Browser If Playback Doesn’t Begin Shortly (Before You Try Restarting Your Device)

While watching videos on Chrome or your favorite web browser, you may come across an error. It reads “If playback doesn’t begin shortly, try restarting your device”.

Well, restarting the device doesn’t necessarily solve this problem. You need to catch the reason why your browser throws up this message.

It isn’t because of some issue with your Internet connection. And, it’s not that YouTube doesn’t want to play videos for you. It is simply because your browser is unable to render images from the video during playback.

So, to fix “If playback doesn’t begin shortly, try restarting your device” error, you can check out the four solutions put forth below. Try them out one by one to see which one fixes the problem.

How To Fix If Playback Doesn't Being Shortly Try Restarting Your Device Error On Youtube in Video Review

1. Run Graphics Driver Updates

First, check for updates for your display adapters. In order to fix “If playback doesn’t begin shortly, try restarting your device” error, you need to update your graphics drivers.

An outdated graphics driver can delay playback on your web browser. If you have installed a new graphics card, you need to update the driver accordingly. Outdated software causes turbulence in the rendering capabilities of the graphics card.

To update your graphics/video card driver,

• Launch the Run program by pressing ‘ Windows ’ and ‘ R ’ key together
• Now, you need to type “ devmgmt.msc ” in the Open dialog box

• Then, click on OK to launch Device Manager
• In the Device Manager window, scroll down through the list of devices
• Expand the device list for ‘ Display Adapters ’
• Right-click on the current video card (say, the Nvidia graphics card)
• Click on ‘ Enable ’ if the driver isn’t activated
• Now, right-click on it again and select ‘ Update Driver Software ’

• Then, your computer throws a prompt window
• Here, click on the option that says – Search automatically for updated driver software

Let the update installation process finish, and restart your computer. After updating your graphics card, try to run videos on your web browser.

If the videos run properly, then driver updates have fixed “If playback doesn’t begin shortly, try restarting your device” error.

2. Remove Graphics Drivers

Sometimes, driver updates may not solve this problem. That’s primarily because your current graphics card isn’t able to deliver the needed visual support. Your Windows computer needs a new graphics driver.

You need to remove the graphics card and its driver. And later, you can re-install it to fix “If playback doesn’t begin shortly, try restarting your device” error.

To uninstall graphics card and driver software,

• Open the Run program (press ‘ Windows ’ and ‘ R ’ key together)
• In the Open dialog box, type ‘ devmgmt.msc ’

• Press the Enter key or click on OK
• Now, you’ve opened the Device Manager
• Browse through the list of devices
• Expand the device list under ‘ Display Adapters ’
• Right-click on the currently-activated graphics card
• Click on ‘ Uninstall ’

• If a confirmation prompt pops up, click on ‘ Yes ’

After you uninstall the graphics card, restart your computer. During the reboot process, your system’s BIOS automatically download’s the graphics driver setup by booting it from the manufacturer’s website.

When you log on to your computer, you can install the drivers manually. Later, open your web browser, go to a video streaming website and try playing the videos.

Say, you open Chrome and go to YouTube. If playback doesn’t begin shortly, then you need to try other solutions to fix the issue.

3. Get HTML5 Player Add-ons

If the above solutions couldn’t resolve the issue, you need to get a new HTML5 video player for your web browser. This fix is effective when your browsers are either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

If playback doesn’t begin shortly, Chrome needs a new HTML5 video player. Getting these player add-ons can fix “If playback doesn’t begin shortly” error in Firefox as well.

Click on the link below to install HTML5 video player add-ons on your browser.

For Firefox: addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-flash-player/

For Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/html5-video-speed-control/ejdipbccipeloijefbkiakckfhdbgocg

4. Turn Off the Hardware Acceleration

Disabling the hardware acceleration of your browsers can also fix this error. When you turn off the hardware acceleration, your browser doesn’t throw up the “If playback doesn’t begin shortly, try restarting your device” message.

Instead, it uses the CPU to render web pages and videos.

To disable hardware acceleration on Chrome

• Open the Google Chrome browser
• Click on the three vertical dots at the top-right corner
• Select ‘ Settings ’ from the dropdown menu and click on it

• Scroll down the Settings page and click on Advanced
• Here, find a header called System Settings
• Under this section, turn off the option that says “ Use hardware acceleration when available ”

• Now, close the Chrome and restart it

For Firefox, you can turn off the hardware acceleration with the following steps.

• Open the Firefox browser
• Go to the URL bar and type “ about:preferences ”

• Press the Enter key
• In the Preferences page , scroll down to the General section and go to the Performance header
• Here, uncheck the option – Use recommended performance settings
• Now, under this option, you need to uncheck the option that says “ Use hardware acceleration when available ”

• After this, close the Firefox
• Restart your PC to put the change into effect

If you are using Internet Explorer, here’s how you turn off the GPU hardware acceleration.

• Open the Run program (Press the keys – Windows + R )
• Type “ inetcpl.cpl ” in the Open dialog box

• Click on OK (or press the Enter key)
• This opens the Internet Properties windows
• Here, go to the “ Advanced ” tab
• Under the section for Accelerated Graphics , put a check on the box next – Use software rendering instead of GPU rendering

• Click on Apply to set this change
• Click on OK to save the change and put into effect
• This disables hardware acceleration for Internet Explorer

All the solutions presented above can fix “If playback doesn’t begin shortly, try restarting your device” error. It’s only a matter of which one fixes this problem on your own PC.

Before opting for solution #2 , you can try out #3 , #1 , or even #4 . Let us know which fix worked for you by leaving your comments below.

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