Safari not showing HDR option in Youtube (2021 Macbook Pro M1 Max)

I believe this maybe related to a recent issue where M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pro experienced crashing when playing YouTube HDR video.

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/11/05/m1-pro-max-youtube-hdr-crashes/

Figured it out!

It is Youtube discriminating against Safari/Mac users. If you change the user agent in developer mode to Chrome/Windows, the HDR option reappears in Youtube while using Safari

Thanks Youtube/Google for being jerks, give me yet another reason to cancel my Youtube Premium subscription.

Hi. I know your current fix is changing User Agent, but have you tried turning off "Optimise video streaming while on battery" in settings under the Battery section?

Turning this option off brought back HDR Youtube content on Safari for me, whilst still having the User Agent set to "Default (Automatically Chosen)"

I have the same question too. This used to work just a few days back and for some reason it has recently stopped. In addition to Apple being a possible culprit, it's also possible that YouTube disabled HDR on Safari? If I switch to Chrome I can see HDR perfectly fine.

Nice find @PdxOg!

As you pointed out, choosing `Develop` -> `User Agent` -> `Google Chrome - Windows` works for me.

Youtube has been playing a cat and mouse game with Safari for a long time now. So not surprised but also would love to know what is behind this decision.

HDR content tends to look like crap on non-HDR screens. I wonder if browsers have a way to tell if the display supports HDR content so Youtube can "map" to the appropriate content? The "real" customer centric option (eg. Amazon way) here would have been for Google to offer an option for users to switch to HDR and stay switched to HDR.

Really frustrating as I have started to shoot/edit HDR content with the newer iPhones and frequently upload them to Youtube to share with friends and family. I hope Apple is following up on this with Google/Youtube given most of their newer iPhones tout Dolby Vision HDR.

Hi! Sorry to hear that, apple did disable hdr from YouTube I think but if it’s not back yet… have you tried disabling the “save battery” feature in the battery system preferences? It came back with the update but I noticed that when that feature is enable I can’t watch hdr content.

Same problem. M1Pro

It was working fine a few days ago, now the option is gone viewing youtube in safari. Option is there if I use Chrome.

This did not work for me. Still no HDR option even in Chrome. What gives?