YouTube Videos Load Slowly? Get Fixes to YouTube Videos Lagging

Eleanor Reed

Dec 16, 2024 • Filed to: Photo/Video/Audio Solutions • Proven solutions

When you need to get entertainment, YouTube is the right place to turn to. You can watch your favorite videos, but the last thing you want is to see your YouTube lagging or loading slowly. This problem is well-expressed by one of the YouTube viewers.

"While trying to watch some YouTube videos on my laptop, YouTube videos are loading slowly."

So, Why do YouTube videos load slowly? There is no need to worry because you can fix YouTube videos lagging. This post will show you how to fix YouTube videos lagging or buffering.

Part 1. Why is YouTube so slow to load

The last thing on your mind should be to face YouTube videos load slowly or buffering. It's frustrating and can easily ruin your day, but there are reasons for your YouTube experience. Want to know the reasons why YouTube videos loading slow and how they cause the problems? Below is what happens when you see YouTube videos lagging.

Overloaded servers. There are more than a billion video hours with billions of views. Although YouTube is known for having a robust infrastructure, it can still be overwhelmed by heavy traffic. If you notice that your internet is working smoothly except for YouTube, most likely, it has some problems with heavy traffic. If this is the case, then you will experience YouTube videos lagging or buffering.
Internet problems. A bad internet connection can cause slow loading issues. You can realize that the internet connection is horrible when there is video buffering. Your device is supposed to use one internet connection at a time. This means it will either use your mobile connection or Wi-Fi. Hence, if the signal quality is intermittent for your cellular network or Wi-Fi, there will be YouTube lagging. Your device is not receiving enough data packets from the server to power an excellent video streaming experience. Unfortunately, there is only one lane that data can use, and some of it gets stuck.
An outdated flash. The Flash powers YouTube videos. This is designed for animation and interactivity using. Therefore, if you have an outdated Flash, you will probably experience videos lagging or buffering.
Cache in your browser. When you load anything on your browser for the first time, it will cache it. Over time, your browser keeps a lot of data. As a result of this, the load times of YouTube videos slow down.

Part 2: How to fix YouTube videos lagging or buffering?

You might be wondering why YouTube videos are lagging, buffering, or not loading at all when you have an excellent internet connection. Instead of getting frustrated by this experience, you need to fix this problem. Whether you are using your carrier's cellular network or Wi-Fi, here are some solutions to fix the issues of YouTube videos lagging or buffering on your device.

Step 1: Clear cache in your browser.

Your browser might have a lot of temporary data. When this happens, YouTube videos might experience lagging or buffering. Therefore, you need to clear the cache in your browser by doing the following.

First of all, you have to clear the cache by clicking 3-dots on the Chrome Menu icon. Go to the More Tools and select Clear Browsing Data.
Choose the All-Time on the next screen. This provides you with a Time Range. You should click the Clear Data button to ensure that you remove the Browsing History, Cache Images, and Cookies.

Now that you have got rid of the browser cache, you can play YouTube videos to confirm if the loading or buffering problem is fixed.

What if you accidentally deleted important history data? Check out how to recover deleted Internet history.

Step 2: Close the open tabs on your browser.

There are various reasons why YouTube videos might lag or buffer. It's quite common to find too many open tabs on your web browser. Perhaps this can be one of the contributing factors because too many open tabs affect YouTube videos' performance. Here is what you need to do to free up your overloaded browser.

The best way you can handle this is by closing them one at a time. Then you can play YouTube videos to find out if the lagging problem is solved.
You can also close all the browser tabs you are not using. This will free up space on your device to enable YouTube videos to run smoothly.
Alternatively, you can type in this URL, chrome://settings/clearBrowserData. Then choose the cache you want to clear

Step 3: Change video quality settings.

Sometimes, YouTube videos lagging or buffering problems are a result of issues with your internet connection. It's also possible to have a perfect internet connection yet still have lagged on YouTube videos. In this case, the lagging or buffering issues on your device might be because of overload on YouTube servers. So you can wait for the servers to get back to normal or consider switching to lower quality settings on YouTube videos. YouTube automatically adjusts the quality of videos depending on your internet connection. If this is the case, you might experience a lower quality video if your internet connection is slow and vice versa. You can change your video quality settings manually. Take the following steps to change the video quality.

Select a YouTube video you intend to watch. You can click the settings button.

youtube quality setting

Click on the Quality, and then select a lower quality setting. If there is still lagging or buffering while watching the YouTube video, you can choose even a lower non-HD setting.

Slow network speed is usually the root cause of YouTube videos lagging. YouTube tends to automatically choose for you a video quality depending on your network speed. Therefore, if your local Internet Service Provider controls the bandwidth and speeds for downloads, you might experience YouTube videos lagging or buffering. In such situations, you need to contact your Internet Service Provider for assistance. Meantime, you can still play YouTube videos by reducing video quality settings.

Step 4: Update drivers.

If you are using a computer, probably the Drivers for the Display adapter are outdated. Consequently, these drivers become incompatible with recent updates on YouTube. YouTube videos will usually lag when graphic drivers are outdated. Take the following steps to update your drivers.

Right-click the Start button. This will take you to the menu with the Device Manager. Then select the Device Manager.
Expand Display Adapters on the Device Manager screen. Right-click the Graphics Card and select the option with the Update Driver.
Click on the Search Automatically for updated the driver on the next screen. This will advise you to wait for a few seconds as it searches and installs the latest Driver.

With the updated drivers on your device, you can restart it to see if the YouTube videos are lagging or buffering.

Step 5: Re-install the latest version of the web browser.

Your web browser might have some corrupt problems, meaning the YouTube videos will lag or buffer. If the web browser is outdated, it's possible to experience compatibility problems. If you have the latest web browser and plug-ins, it improves performance. You see, an updated web browser also ensures the smooth running of the browser. Alternatively, you can fix this problem by re-installing your web browser. To see if this solution can fix your problem, do the following.

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Start by clicking on the Start Menu, located at the bottom left of your computer screen. Type the word Control to get the Control Panel. Then right-click the Control Panel.
From the View By drop-down menu, choose the Large Icons. Here, you will get and click on the Programs and Features.
Right-click on your web browser and choose Uninstall.
Once you uninstall the web browser, look for the latest version of the browser on the official site. You can download this latest version and install it.

Here is the deal, you need to start the newly installed web browser to see if the YouTube videos are no longer lagging or buffering.

Part 3: How to repair corrupt local YouTube videos

YouTube videos are intended to reliably and smoothly play on your computer or any other device. But, if your video is not playing after recovery, there is a chance that your video is corrupt. Incomplete data recovery due to interrupted internet connection or power outage can cause video corruption. There is also a possibility that before recovery, there was corruption in the media storage. Because video corruption causes various damages such as sound, header, and frames of video files, such videos fail to play properly after you recover them. Here is how you can repair corrupt local YouTube videos.

Step 1: Use manual methods to repair corrupt videos

When you observe that you have shaky videos, it's an indication of a corrupt video. Therefore, you can use a manual method to repair the video. Try the following steps to repair your video.

Check if your device is designed to play local YouTube videos. For example, you need a stronger graphics card and processor to run a higher resolution video.
Old drivers might affect the quality of the videos. Hence, make sure that it's not old. If it's old, try to re-install the latest video drivers.
You can play your videos on another device to check if the problem is with your device.
Reduce the size of the video and its resolution.

Step 2: Use a video repair tool

Video corruption can also affect the sound of your video. In such situations, the video sound goes down after running it for some time. The bad news is that there is no manual method to repair sound problems in the recovered video. Instead, your best bet is to use video repair tools. These tools are designed to repair various video corruptions, such as the sound damage in the video files.

Step 3: Utilize Wondershare Repairit Video Repair

When videos cannot play because the videos are severely corrupt, you need to use video repair tools. One of the trusted tools is Wondershare Repairit Video Repair. This tool will ensure that it repairs videos with the following formats: MOV, MP4, M2TS, MKV, MTS, 3GP, AVI, and FLV. Wondershare Repairit Video Repair comprises two repair modes, The Quick Repair, and the Advance Repair modes.

Quick Repair allows you to repair various video errors. On the other hand, Advance Repair is designed to repair several corrupt videos by adding a sample file. Now, you might be wondering what a sample file is. A sample file is simply a working file that your devices create using the same format as the corrupt file. Here is the best part, Wondershare Repairit uses the same information from the working file to repair the corrupt files. Even if the data headers are corrupt, the tool repairs them.

Wondershare Repairit repairs videos that get corrupt when you shoot transfer a file, edit, convert, or process. This means it repairs types of corrupt videos, including video file header corruption, video file system corruption, corruption on the sound section of the video files for either videos only or audios only, corruption on the video slider, and corruption on the video frame. Furthermore, it repairs errors in video movements and video errors such as "video not playing," "error loading media file could not be played," and many more.

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If your video is corrupt because of memory card error, recovered videos are corrupt, change in video format, virus attacks, computer system crash, and other problems, your best option is to utilize the Recoverit. So how can you use Wondershare Repairit? You can install Wondershare Repairit on your computer and take the steps below to repair your corrupt video:

Step 1: Add broken videos

load corrupt video

Open Wondershare Repairit and add the broken videos by clicking the Add button or "Add video and start repairing" area.

Step 2: Start repairing video.

After adding all the broken videos into the software, click the Repair button to start repairing.

repair corrupt video

Step 3: Preview the video

preview process

Once it's done with repairing all the corrupt repairs, you can preview the repaired video by clicking the right triangle button.

Step 4: Save the video

Finally, click the Save button when the repaired video reaches your request.

save the video

You can save the video to any destination of your choice.

Step 5: Advanced Repair mode (optional)

Advance Repair allows you to add a Sample File if your video is severely corrupt. This file has the same format as the corrupt video. Just click the Advanced Repair button and click the folder icon in the pop-up window to browse and choose one sample file. With it done, click the Repair button to start repairing.

add sample video

Wondershare Repairit will help you repair corrupt videos on YouTube. Even better, it has several features to ensure you get a great user experience. You can repair multiple video formats simultaneously, repair videos from several devices, repair any number of corrupt video files, and many more. It repairs videos from different devices, such as memory cards, SD cards, computer hard drives, digital cameras, and action cameras. The huge benefit of using it is that it supports Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista, XP, and macOS 10.9 - 10.15.

Get the complete steps on repairing video files from the camera.

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When YouTube keeps lagging or buffering, it can be overwhelming. But, the above solutions will help you get your videos playing smoothly again. Because manual solutions are not the best solutions for severely corrupt videos, consider using the Wondershare Repairit Video Repair. It is specifically designed to repair damaged and corrupt videos that are not playing. Besides being intuitive and user-friendly, there are no limitations on the size of video files it repairs.

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