Stop Google From Artificially Slowing Down YouTube | Lifehacker

It appears 2023 is the 12 months Google has determined to make you utilize YouTube the best way it desires you to make use of YouTube.

First, the corporate started getting aggressive with viewers visiting YouTube with advert blockers. Users begin by seeing a pop-up warning them to not use advert blockers on YouTube, however are capable of shut it and proceed on. Soon after, the pop-up does not shut, not less than not till YouTube detects the consumer disables their advert blocker.

Not everyone seems to be experiencing this anti-ad blocker technique but, however that does not imply Google is sparing them, both. Now, the corporate seems to be slowing down YouTube speeds on non-Chrome browsers equivalent to Firefox and Edge.

How the YouTube slowdown works

Firefox who first observed the “artificial slowdown,” reporting that loading a YouTube video takes a strong 5 seconds in Mozilla’s browser, whereas loading instantaneously in Google’s. You can see the impact in motion in this Reddit publish: A Firefox consumer clicks a Linus Tech Tips video to observe, then stares at a clean display screen for 5 seconds till the video web page lastly masses into view.

Even from this preview video, it is evident that this is not your common gradual community connection concern. Within this context, you possibly can inform there’s one thing stopping YouTube from loading instantly. When YouTube does lastly load, it does so fairly shortly.

There are reviews of this exercise occurring in Edge as effectively, though I do not appear to come across the problem on both browser utilizing uBlock Origin.

Google does not deny slowing down browsers

In response to press requests concerning the state of affairs, Google didn’t verify it’s slowing down browser deliberately, but it surely did not deny it, both. In truth, Google confirmed viewers utilizing advert blockers on YouTube may encounter points:

To help a various ecosystem of creators globally and permit billions to entry their favourite content material on YouTube, we’ve launched an effort to induce viewers with advert blockers enabled to permit adverts on YouTube or attempt YouTube Premium for an advert free expertise … Users who’ve advert blockers put in might expertise suboptimal viewing, whatever the browser they’re utilizing.

Google’s assertion largely focuses on its beforehand introduced anti-ad blocking efforts. However, saying that advert blockers may present customers “suboptimal viewing” in response to questions on this slowdown concern maybe implies Google is doing this on objective. The assertion does say there might be points regardless of which browser you utilize advert blockers with, however affected customers verify there is no such thing as a slowdown when utilizing Chrome.

How to cease the YouTube delay in Firefox

As such, one option to repair this concern in Firefox is to make YouTube assume you are utilizing Chrome within the first place. You can use a course of referred to as consumer agent switching to successfully flip Firefox into Chrome when you have to.

One common means to do that is by utilizing the User-Agent Switcher and Manager add-on. Once put in, open the extension, then select one of many Chrome variations listed and hit Refresh. The add-on switches your consumer agent to Chrome routinely, so you possibly can browse websites like YouTube as should you have been utilizing Google’s browser as a substitute. However, this add-on requires entry to all knowledge on every web site you utilize it with, which is clearly not excellent from a privateness perspective.

A safer option to swap your user-agent is to take action manually. To begin, open a brand new tab, sort about:config within the URL and hit Enter. Accept the warning pop-up, sort basic.useragent.override, hit String, then hit the (+). Now, open Chrome in your laptop, place a seek for “my user agent,” and replica and paste the leads to the textual content area. Hit Enter as soon as once more, and your Firefox browser now seems like Chrome to the world vast net.

You can at all times revert again to Firefox by deleting the consumer agent choice you made right here. Keep that in thoughts, since Firefox options, just like the add-on web site, is not going to work once you’re utilizing a customized consumer agent.

uBlock Origin has a workaround

If you do not need to trouble with consumer agent switching, you possibly can attempt this uBlock Origin workaround. Once you might have uBlock Origin put in in your browser, open it, open Dashboard, then head to My filters. Paste the next into the sphere:

||googlevideo.com/videoplayback$xhr,3p,technique=get,area=www.youtube.com

Now, hit Apply adjustments, and open YouTube in a brand new window to see if the delay remains to be current.

Of course, another nonetheless is to disable advert blockers for YouTube, or subscribe to YouTube Premium, however should you’re studying this text, you possible do not need to go down both of these paths.