Was your morning ritual disrupted by a particularly low-quality YouTube video? You’ll be glad to learn that it isn’t due to a suffering internet connection, a faulty device, or your eyes playing tricks on you. In the past couple of hours, thousands of users have reported extremely low quality on Google’s online streamer, being forced to scrape by with 360p video quality – and in some cases, 144p. Gross.
Blurred lines
The issue, currently plaguing users across iOS, desktop, and even smart TVs, appears to have dodged Android users – at least according to our tests, as well as YouTube’s official response to the whole ordeal. “We’re aware some of you are experiencing lower than usual video quality when trying to watch Videos and Shorts,” the company said.
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Attempting to bump those numbers up to 1080p or even 720p typically results in longer-than-average buffer times, despite a strong connection for many users. Many users across Reddit have reported certain videos failing to load at all – particularly those featuring hour-long runtimes – even after dropping the quality. Users have attempted to fix the issue by updating YouTube and iOS, and even resetting their devices, to no avail.
At the time of writing, YouTube had failed to expound on what might be causing the bug and, perhaps more frustratingly, didn’t offer any sort of indication when users could expect a fix. The team is “actively looking into” the bug, however, and will update customers with new information as soon as it becomes available.
