YouTube Playback error on Safari

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Level 1

19 points

YouTube Playback error on Safari

Youtube playback error (safari) issue over past couple of weeks "An error occurred"

So over the past couple of weeks I have had issues using YouTube, I keep getting the following error after a couple minutes of watching, on every video:

I am currently running macOS Big Sur Beta. Could this be causing the issue? I have no adblocker extension. I am running anti virus software but extensions have been turned off. The videos are generating this error immediately though they run fine on Chrome.

Anyone else having this issue and has a fix?

Thanks in advance.

Posted on Oct 16, 2020 1:56 PM

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Answer 1

Ian Leckie

Level 4

2,321 points

Oct 17, 2020 8:56 AM in response to Russ4668

I´m still running Mojave and started having this exact problem in YouTube after Safari was updated to 14.0. The only work-around I have found is simply to refresh the page using Command-R, or clicking on the curved arrow symbol on the right of Safari´s URL address bar. I think this is a problem with Safari 14.0, and nothing to do with macOS Big Sur Beta! BTW, the general consensus here (search this forum!) is that unless you're on a network with Windows PCs you don't need any anti virus software! macOS looks after itself. Try de-installing this software, which apart from possibly slowing down your Mac can cause other problems. Hope this helps you! Regards, Ian.

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Answer 2

Ian Leckie

Level 4

2,321 points

Oct 17, 2020 10:35 AM in response to Russ4668

You're welcome, glad to have helped you! While refreshing the page is a pain (I don't have to do this with all YouTube films...just a lot of them!) I would leave your OS as it is and wait, as I am doing, for Apple to fix this Safari 14.0 bug...reading around it seems to be quite a widespread problem! Ian.

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Answer 3

Ian Leckie

Level 4

2,321 points

Oct 17, 2020 12:10 PM in response to Russ4668

Sorry refreshing doesn‘t work for you, and I should have mentioned that trying another browser to use when Safari won’t behave is a good idea! For those times I use Opera. Regards, Ian.

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Answer 4

Russ4668 Author

Level 1

19 points

Oct 17, 2020 11:02 AM in response to Ian Leckie

I tried refreshing to no avail, so I installed Chrome and no problems. Thanks for all you help Ian. Have a great day.

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Answer 5

Russ4668 Author

Level 1

19 points

Oct 17, 2020 10:27 AM in response to Ian Leckie

Good morning Ian,

I agree. I think the playback error for Youtube is attributed to Safari 14.0 which I updated to in the last beta update of MacOS Big Sur a few days ago. I suspect the only way to remedy this for now would be to downgrade to MacOS Catalina which would require a fair amount of effort and I would likely upgrade back to MacOS Big Sur in the coming months. My hope is that Apple has recognized this as a bug in Safari 14.0 and will fix it in their next beta release. In the meantime I was running Bitdefender on my MacBook and uninstalled as per your recommendation, I also installed a number of unnecessary apps and I've certainly seen a better performance with my MacBook as well loess RAM being used. Thanks for the tip.

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YouTube Playback error on Safari

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