Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Users recently experienced an issue where YouTube videos defaulted to low resolutions like 144p or 360p despite having sufficient internet speeds.
- Manually switching to higher resolutions caused constant buffering.
- Google has since fixed the problem, as confirmed by a silent update on YouTube’s help page. All impacted platforms have now returned to normal streaming behavior.
YouTube users recently encountered a strange bug in which the video stream would default to low resolutions like 144p and 360p, even when the user’s internet speed is more than sufficient. If the user manually switched to a higher resolution like 1080p, constant buffering would result despite the connection not being a problem. YouTube had acknowledged the issue and was working on a fix. Thankfully, the issue now seems to be fixed.
The issue was experienced on iOS, desktops, and smart TVs. I checked across all three platforms, and video streams have started functioning normally. Android phones and tablets were unaffected by the bug, so they continue to function normally, too.
Is YouTube’s video stream quality fixed for you? Are you still experiencing a poor stream or buffering issues? Let us know in the comments below!
