YouTube Slow Loading & Buffering Fixed in 5 Easy Ways

By: Ritika Purohit - Updated: November 28, 2018 8:51 am

Why is YouTube loading so slow? Sometimes YouTube becomes slow due to some server issues or because of the slow Internet connection.

I am sure that many users have experienced this problem at some point while browsing videos on YouTube. Over the years, YouTube has emerged as a top video sharing website with billions of users worldwide. It’s very annoying to see YouTube running slow as the slow speed literally kills your excitement.

So what’s the reason behind a slow loading YouTube? Let’s find out and see how to fix this issue.

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Why is Your YouTube Video Buffering Continuously?

YouTube video starts buffering and takes too long to load due to the following reasons:

Internet issues or problem in the internet router
Overload server
Browser cache
IP address change
Outdated Flash

You can quickly fix these issues by yourself by trying out the simple solutions to fix the above reasons causing problems in loading your page.

How to Fix YouTube slow loading issue?

We have listed a few quick and easy solutions which will mostly fix your YouTube issue. Let’s get started

1. Change the YouTube URL

Yes! According to many users, you can merely change the URL and fix the problem. It works well for unknown reasons. Just follow these two simple steps-

Open the YouTube video
Replace the URL www with ca

For example— If your video URL is https://www.youtube.com/07d2dXHYb94 change it to https://ca.youtube.com/07d2dXHYb94

That’s it! You can now see your YouTube video without any buffers in a fresh new window.

2. Clear Cache

When you load your YouTube page for the first time, the browser caches everything for loading faster the next time. We recommend you to clear your web browser cache often as your browser store might use too much of data and hence run so slow. However, clearing cache varies on different browsers, and you can check it online. Here’s how you clear cache in Google Chrome:

1) Open your Google Chrome browser

2) Hit the Chrome menu button (three dots to the top right corner)

3) Now, from the drop-down menu, select the More tools option

4) Choose Clear browsing data from the list, and a new Settings page opens up

5) Here, click on the checkboxes for cached images and files and also for Cookies and other site data

6) After this, hit the CLEAR BROWSER DATA icon

Done! You can now close your web browser and open YouTube in it and check whether it still takes time to load your YouTube video.

3. Lower the Quality Setting of your Video

We all love to enjoy our video on a high definition quality, but due to heavy traffic on your browser, it may take a long time to load your video. We suggest you change the quality of your video to 480p. So to lower quality settings, follow the steps mentioned below.

1) Open your YouTube video

2) Go to the Settings button (to the right bottom)

3) Hit the Quality option

4) In that, choose a lower quality than the current one.

Note: The video becomes blurred below the 360p quality

The footage might now play generally on a lower quality level and if the issue still continues, go to the next step.

4. Block These Two IP Addresses

At times, you open YouTube video from a Content Delivery Network (CDN) which our Internet Service Providers (ISPs) set up. They easily restrict the speed to these CDNs as you haven’t used YouTube directly. To avoid your video to load slowly, just block the two following IP address ranges

173.194.55.0/24
206.111.0.0/16

Follow the steps mentioned below, to block them

1) Go to the Search bar and type cmd to open Command Prompt ( Admin permissions)

2) In Command Prompt , enter the following command –line

netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name=”YouTubeTweak” dir=in action=block remoteip=173.194.55.0/24,206.111.0.0/16 enable=yes" srcset="img/uploads/2018/11/20-1.jpg 1253w" sizes="(max-width: 1253px) 100vw, 1253px"/>

netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name=”YouTubeTweak” dir=in action=block remoteip=173.194.55.0/24,206.111.0.0/16 enable=yes

3) One it is done, press Enter to add the rule

4) Close the Command Prompt window

The two unwanted IP addresses are blocked successfully. If in case you want to remove the rule, open Command Prompt as an administrator and enter the following command-

netsh advfirewall firewall delete rule name=”YouTubeTweak”

5. Use a VPN Service

Well, if you are using a VPN service and still facing the YouTube running slow issue, disable this service and check if it works. If you are not using a VPN software, try using it for streaming a video and see if works well for you. There are many free online VPN software, you can download them and use it.

Alternatively, we suggest you use the Opera browser as it comes to an inbuilt VPN service. Follow steps below to enable VPN in Opera browser:

1) Open Opera

2) Go to Settings

3) Click on Advanced and select Privacy and Security

4) Scroll down and search for the VPN icon and Enable it

If you are not using Opera, you can search a lot of free online VPNs for your Chrome, Safari or any other browser. Install it and see if your VPN software fixes the YouTube video problem.

With the tips mentioned above, you can solve YouTube loading slow issue. As discussed above, many reasons are causing the problem. One of them is an outdated flash version, to update them –go to the Adobe’s official website and install the latest flash version. Let us know if you come across any other issue with your YouTube application in the comments section below.

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