All youtube videos stopped playing suddenly today

I'm having the same problem myself. I'm using a MacBook Pro Retina 13" Core i7 (mid-2014), and all YouTube videos fail to work using the HTML5 player.

I have a feeling it's a bug on Google's end. They likely tried to tweak something on their end, and it broke Safari compatibility. A similar thing happened about a year ago on the Wii U's Internet browser.

Just give it some time. Flash Player still works, and you can always use Chrome in the meantime.

Exactly the same here as well, worked last night now completely dead. Speakers make a squeal for 1/10 of a second and it stops.

Exact problem. I forgot to mention that in my original reply.

Sometimes it squeals and gives an error message. Sometimes it loads the Flash player. Sometimes it refuses to load anything. Sometimes it locks the page up, forcing a Force Reload. I got it to work once out of a hundred times.

Same problem on my MacAir with Safari 8.0. Looks like this new OS (Yosemite) is kind of plagued with glitches and bugs. First it was Mail w/MS-Exchange, now Safari/Youtube... I'm spending more time checking and fixing than with any other update in the past. Hope Apple implements a better quality control before releasing updates to the public, or we'll continue to have new surprises every day...

My Safari has the same symptoms after the Yosemite update I received last night. I am wondering if this is related. Firefox seems to be working fine.

Unlikely. I had the problem before I updated mine.

Again, it could very well be a bug on Google's end. This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened to me, just on a different platform.

Same issue, just happened to me. Chrome is working fine.

XP100 wrote:

Exact problem. I forgot to mention that in my original reply.

Sometimes it squeals and gives an error message. Sometimes it loads the Flash player. Sometimes it refuses to load anything. Sometimes it locks the page up, forcing a Force Reload. I got it to work once out of a hundred times.

(Emphasis mine)

Mine started doing the highlighted above about an hour ago. At first I thought it was my internet connection, but after checking the same video in Chrome, deleting the cache, restarting the modem router, and restarting my computer, alas to no avail. I'm guessing either something to do with the wi-fi issues Yosemite has, or a bug in Safari.

Exactly the same here, everything else works fine, no Internet problems, all other websites are fine, YouTube causes Safari to hang, sometimes an audible squeal, others nothing just a beachball, a quick look in Activity Monitor shows Safari Web Content as not responding.

+1

Re: Yosemite 10.10.1 causing Safari not to play YouTube videos...

Same problem here. FIrefox/Chrome works fine. Removed all caches, also didn't help.

Same as everyone else. Must be something on Google's end. Watched a video perfectly. Went to watch another, and it hasn't worked since. Same symptoms as the rest of you.

I was having the same issues: no YouTube videos. I went a bit deeper and found that videos I had watched before was playing just fine.

Installed the "latest and greatest" flash player. The problem with YouTube continued.

Opened up Firefox and went to a video that was causing the issue (blank video area, comment area always "loading"). It played fine. Stopped the video after the ad and about a minute of the actual video.

Then I quit Firefox and went into Safari and hit that video that was giving me issues. It began playing right where I left off in Firefox. Okay, I know that when I sign into my google account, and go to YouTube, it keeps track of what I watch and allows me to switch platforms/apps and continue to watch the video where I left off.

I had a hunch, I went to another video that was causing me issues and the issue persisted. Went to my home page (top sites) in Safari. Quit Safari. Opened Firefox and went to that video in youTube and sure enough, there was an ad at the beginning of it. Played the ad till I could skip the darn thing and played a minute of the video. Quit Firefox and opened Safari, went to YouTube and in my history, went to that video. It played.

So my takeaway is that there's something askew with the Ads that precede the videos. Safari doesn't "like" them or some such. And since most ads are in flash format, I would hazard a guess that the ads are doing "something" that is stalling Safari.

Adobe Flash Player version 15.0.0.223 is the latest version.

1. System Preferences > Flash Player > Advanced > Delete All

Press the "Delete All" button.

Install Adobe Flash Player.

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

Download it first.

The next step is important.

Click Safari in the menubar and select “Quit Safari”.

Follow the prompts and install it.

Restart computer. Relaunch Safari.

2. Allow Plug-ins

Safari > Preferences > Security

Internet Plug-ins > "Allow plug-ins"

Enable it.