As a counter-anecdote, I use YouTube daily in Safari and it will not infrequently hang for tens of seconds when trying to load a video, occasionally play the sound without the video, reasonably frequently put the video over most of the page with no way to get to the controls, etc.
(This may be because I have a whole swathe of adblockers, etc., plus I do a lot of `yt-dlp`ing from the same IP which may have me on a naughty list.)
> I tried watching a 15 min yt video without adblock and it had 5 ad breaks with some unskippable ads.
Yeah - I watch most of my YouTubes on the Apple TV and the ads are a pestilence. Sometimes it'll be 50s pre-roll[1] with multiple 30-50s breaks for a 10m videos.
Luckily there exist[0] many fine technologies that let you view them without ads via something like Infuse with a DLNA server if you're that way inclined.
[0] Currently. YT-DLP is fighting the good fight but I don't know how much longer they'll be able to keep in front. But then I'll just stop watching YouTube, really, because it's a horror show without adblock/circumventions.
[1] The video doesn't appear in your history until the pre-roll has finished which means if you can't be arsed sitting through a 50s pre-roll just that second and - at least on the Apple TV - you've not clicked on the video from your homepage / subscriptions, good luck trying to find it again unless you remember the name + channel etc. (which it also won't properly show you until after the pre-roll!)[2]
I don't get the value ad of youtube music. Everything's already on youtube and they let you make playlists, and they have playlists of the top charts already.
What else does youtube music get you? I can play on my phone with the screen off with yt vanced ( and I would never pay just for that feature, because I remember when it was free and they took it away )
They limit the buffer to around 30secs or so like all other streaming services but otherwise 95%+ of the time it just plays smoothing with no buffering at all from start to end. YouTube is generally in the top 3 of the video streaming services I use. Even on 4G wireless (which I occassionally use) it works well enough which is impressive as other video steaming services struggle (with the sole exception of Netflix which is probably the only one better than YouTube).
That's a bit like complaining no cars have trouble because your Fiat doesn't have a problem. There are more browser engines out there than the ones you use, some in direct competition with Google themselves, maybe people using those engines are experiencing issues? Jumping to calling out "hyperbole!" sounds like hyperbole itself, since you don't actually have broad experience enough to say if that's true or not.
FWIW, when I use Chromium (logged out/in) on Linux, everything works fine. If I use Firefox (logged in), it works worse. If I change the user-agent to Chromium in Firefox, I get faster buffering than when I use the default user-agent. Make of that what you will.
> That's a bit like complaining no cars have trouble because your Fiat doesn't have a problem.
No. Because even if it might be complicated, any website developer can test their website against a wide array of browsers, in a more or less automated way.
When it comes to video it’s not only the browser. It’s also your gpu, your OS and your gpu drivers.
Notably, YouTube these days prioritize AV1 codec even if you don’t have gpu acceleration for it, making lots of systems fall back to CPU decoding and making it completely unusable. Install the h264ify extension to force h264 during content negotiation and get your gpu decoding back.
Even if you can make a matrix of all those combinations, it’s even more complex than that to test in practice. Take my laptop for example, it starts off good and manages the cpu decoding for a while, a few minutes into a video it overheats and throttles, causing stutter.
What YouTube should do on the other hand, and I’m sure they already do, is to collect metrics from all playbacks. That should show black on white how many users struggle with each codec.
I don’t think I’m in any minority here given how many million installations the h264ify extension has. Google simply care more about their bandwidth cost than the user experience.
So you're expecting Google engineers and managers to prioritize adding broad cross-browser support, which adds more work for them, when the same company is also developing a competing browser?
No, Firefox always been a second-rate guest at Google properties, and I'm not expecting it to change soon either. Why would they make it better when status quo means more Chrome users (in their mind)?
I run it in firefox. Today a video kept freezing when I scrolled down to load the comments. Sometimes I bizarrely have to scroll super far down to get past recommended videos to see the comments, which sometimes crashes the tab.
On mobile (Firefox) I frequently have issues with videos freezing or videos crashing when I try to replay a section.
I freely admit to holding google software to a higher standard than e.g. random FOSS tools I use or saas from startups, however I also believe google has the talent, time, and money to where their software should basically be the best on Earth, and it's kinda shocking how often it's not and in what ways it's not. And YouTube is how old now?
The fact alone that I still can't toggle off Google maps "we found a faster route, tap ok to not change the route you change" thing...
As a counter-anecdote, I use YouTube daily in Safari and it will not infrequently hang for tens of seconds when trying to load a video, occasionally play the sound without the video, reasonably frequently put the video over most of the page with no way to get to the controls, etc.
(This may be because I have a whole swathe of adblockers, etc., plus I do a lot of `yt-dlp`ing from the same IP which may have me on a naughty list.)
I have the same issue. I think it's because I'm adblocking because if I try in chrome with no adblocker it loads the ads instantly.
But eh either 5s of black screen or 60s of ads. I tried watching a 15 min yt video without adblock and it had 5 ad breaks with some unskippable ads.
> I tried watching a 15 min yt video without adblock and it had 5 ad breaks with some unskippable ads.
Yeah - I watch most of my YouTubes on the Apple TV and the ads are a pestilence. Sometimes it'll be 50s pre-roll[1] with multiple 30-50s breaks for a 10m videos.
Luckily there exist[0] many fine technologies that let you view them without ads via something like Infuse with a DLNA server if you're that way inclined.
[0] Currently. YT-DLP is fighting the good fight but I don't know how much longer they'll be able to keep in front. But then I'll just stop watching YouTube, really, because it's a horror show without adblock/circumventions.
[1] The video doesn't appear in your history until the pre-roll has finished which means if you can't be arsed sitting through a 50s pre-roll just that second and - at least on the Apple TV - you've not clicked on the video from your homepage / subscriptions, good luck trying to find it again unless you remember the name + channel etc. (which it also won't properly show you until after the pre-roll!)[2]
[2] I hate YouTube corporate.
Youtube is pretty unusable, as they throttle videos, and links sometimes dont work. It has gone downhill fast in recent years.
I have no problems with YouTube at all. Perhaps it's because I pay for Premium (primarily to get YouTube music).
Regardless, Google services getting worse over time is becoming a law rather than a tendency.
I don't get the value ad of youtube music. Everything's already on youtube and they let you make playlists, and they have playlists of the top charts already.
What else does youtube music get you? I can play on my phone with the screen off with yt vanced ( and I would never pay just for that feature, because I remember when it was free and they took it away )
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No one ever got a promotion for maintaining software
Quick, everyone start sending unwanted junk mail to this guy's house, he'll pay you to stop!
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They limit the buffer to around 30secs or so like all other streaming services but otherwise 95%+ of the time it just plays smoothing with no buffering at all from start to end. YouTube is generally in the top 3 of the video streaming services I use. Even on 4G wireless (which I occassionally use) it works well enough which is impressive as other video steaming services struggle (with the sole exception of Netflix which is probably the only one better than YouTube).
No issues here for me with uBO, logged in or not, no premium
No idea what you are talking about. I don’t have premium and use in both logged in and logged out.
If I'm logged out, I get "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot" about once a week from both home and the office.
That's a bit like complaining no cars have trouble because your Fiat doesn't have a problem. There are more browser engines out there than the ones you use, some in direct competition with Google themselves, maybe people using those engines are experiencing issues? Jumping to calling out "hyperbole!" sounds like hyperbole itself, since you don't actually have broad experience enough to say if that's true or not.
FWIW, when I use Chromium (logged out/in) on Linux, everything works fine. If I use Firefox (logged in), it works worse. If I change the user-agent to Chromium in Firefox, I get faster buffering than when I use the default user-agent. Make of that what you will.
> That's a bit like complaining no cars have trouble because your Fiat doesn't have a problem.
No. Because even if it might be complicated, any website developer can test their website against a wide array of browsers, in a more or less automated way.
When it comes to video it’s not only the browser. It’s also your gpu, your OS and your gpu drivers.
Notably, YouTube these days prioritize AV1 codec even if you don’t have gpu acceleration for it, making lots of systems fall back to CPU decoding and making it completely unusable. Install the h264ify extension to force h264 during content negotiation and get your gpu decoding back.
Even if you can make a matrix of all those combinations, it’s even more complex than that to test in practice. Take my laptop for example, it starts off good and manages the cpu decoding for a while, a few minutes into a video it overheats and throttles, causing stutter.
What YouTube should do on the other hand, and I’m sure they already do, is to collect metrics from all playbacks. That should show black on white how many users struggle with each codec.
I don’t think I’m in any minority here given how many million installations the h264ify extension has. Google simply care more about their bandwidth cost than the user experience.
So you're expecting Google engineers and managers to prioritize adding broad cross-browser support, which adds more work for them, when the same company is also developing a competing browser?
No, Firefox always been a second-rate guest at Google properties, and I'm not expecting it to change soon either. Why would they make it better when status quo means more Chrome users (in their mind)?
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I run it in firefox. Today a video kept freezing when I scrolled down to load the comments. Sometimes I bizarrely have to scroll super far down to get past recommended videos to see the comments, which sometimes crashes the tab.
On mobile (Firefox) I frequently have issues with videos freezing or videos crashing when I try to replay a section.
I freely admit to holding google software to a higher standard than e.g. random FOSS tools I use or saas from startups, however I also believe google has the talent, time, and money to where their software should basically be the best on Earth, and it's kinda shocking how often it's not and in what ways it's not. And YouTube is how old now?
The fact alone that I still can't toggle off Google maps "we found a faster route, tap ok to not change the route you change" thing...