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Firefox for Mac is extremely slow to load YouTube videos

  • 10 replies
  • 4 have this problem
  • 14 views
  • Last reply by afatmess

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Every time I go to watch a YouTube video, it takes forever for the video to begin playing. When it does finally start, the quality is often very low, at 240p or 144p. I also have Chrome and Safari installed on my laptop and they do not have any problems playing videos. It is only Firefox. Also, I do not have this problem on my family's laptop, which runs Windows. It is only on my Macbook Pro.

Also, sometimes, various websites take a very long time to load, but this is not nearly as frequent as my problem with YouTube videos.

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox, starting in Safe Mode, disabling various add-ons and plugins, clearing browsing data, and nothing has worked.

Every time I go to watch a YouTube video, it takes forever for the video to begin playing. When it does finally start, the quality is often very low, at 240p or 144p. I also have Chrome and Safari installed on my laptop and they do not have any problems playing videos. It is only Firefox. Also, I do not have this problem on my family's laptop, which runs Windows. It is only on my Macbook Pro. Also, sometimes, various websites take a very long time to load, but this is not nearly as frequent as my problem with YouTube videos. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox, starting in Safe Mode, disabling various add-ons and plugins, clearing browsing data, and nothing has worked.

All Replies (10)

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I have tried these suggestions and none of them solved my problem.

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Is this with the Flash player or with the HTML5 media player that YouTube might be using by default in current Firefox releases.

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I have tried using both the Flash player and the HTML5 player and both have the same issues. In fact, the Flash player will often not even load a video at all.

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Just as a test, try downloading one of the files. Just to make sure the problem is the player.

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Which files are you talking about, Fred?

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The clip you are trying to watch. If it downloads, then that shows the problem is not the clip itself. On the other hand . . . .

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I just downloaded a video and it played no problem.

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Can anyone help me? If not, I'm just going to use Chrome.

Modified by afatmess