Youtube videos freeze in ‘loading state’ after 59 seconds of play…
MacOS/MacBook Pro/Brave Browser build 1.75.81
Hello,
As it seems to be happening on windows as well, every YouTube video I’ve gone to over the last week or so stops playing at 59 seconds. The. loading gif appears and just spins. In some cases, it spins until the page goes grey and leaves a “there was an error” message at the center of the screen. I did learn that if you select ‘copy video URL at current time’, and paste it the video will continue from there, but it will freeze & repeat some 59 seconds later.
Just about three weeks ago, the videos started pausing in the same place, but that could be fixed (a temp fix) by clicking beyond the 59 second mark on the playback time line and the video would continue to play just fine to the end.
A series of updates happened roughly around the same time (Brave, my VPN) and suddenly, the a few hours after my last viewing, it all went to hell. I thought is was my VPN because something similar had a couple of months ago right after a VPN update and a time before that, last year I had an issue with YouTube videos right after a VPN update then as well.
The only ad blocker I have is part of the VPN and I have no other extensions loaded on this computer. I am currently using Sonoma 14.7.4 and my Safari browser is up to date. I use Brave as my default. I am finding that the videos freeze in Safari as well even though it plays ads before the video starts. I don’t get ads with Brave.
Anyone have any thoughts? I’ve done all of the clearing of the cache, turning off the blocker (even reinstalled my VPN) and tried using the Brave Beta Browser that seemed to work for someone from these forums who was using a Windows OS. Thought it might work… it didn’t. I have no other browser installed. And as mentioned earlier, no add extensions.
Thank you for the responses. Very much appreciated. I went to the section Javascript use and my browser is already set to ‘allow javascript’ so I don’t know why it would be blocking ‘googleapis’. However, I researched ‘googleapis-com’ before making this post because I did read the above recommended links before joining these forums. The information I found suggested that ‘googleapis.com’ was associated with a Virus and malice type behavior.
There were a number of postings (good & bad) about ‘googleapis’ and ‘storage.googleapis-com’… I don’t trust Google, don’t use Google, etc… So I’m asking is it safe to use? Is it safe to grant access to? Not sure…
Thank you again for your time and experience. Much appreciated.
Googleapis are needed for youtube and various other websites to function properly. If you block them, they will attempt to load in the background. (some consistently and causes lag / issues) Use ublock filters (for create custom filters) if you intend to block fonts or other elements.
Touché! Odd, I never really even considered that but you are quite correct.
So I did as suggested and added googleapis as directed above. I then closed the browser and opened a new Brave window. I went to a video on YouTube and played it. No luck. The video paused at 59 seconds again. I went back to the Javascript settings had vanished. Today, I added the line again (using [*.], correct???), opened a new page and tried again. Still didn’t work. I went back to the Javascript settings and entry was still there.
I am at a loss. The sad part about this is it’s probably a simple and straightforward fix and I’m just missing something.
Thanks for your suggestions! Your help is appreciated as always.
I do not use Brave Browser for convenience. I use Brave Browser for its Privacy & Security. I liken the browser to a special version of a chess board:
Brave Browser has 3 rows of Pawns, and 8 Knights. Google Chrome and MSFT Edge have the traditional chess boards.
Regarding Brave Shields:
I have more success, with:
Brave Shields UP
Either Allow All Cookies or Block 3rd Party Cookies, but NOT Blocking All Cookies
Allowing JavaScripts from specific sources, but NOT Allowing All JavaScripts
Trackers & Ads treatment: Aggressive (at first), and then incrementally relaxing that setting
Fingerprinting (aka footprinting) blocking: Strict (at first), and then incrementally relaxing that setting
I almost NEVER use:
All of Brave Shields UP
All of Brave Shields DOWN
If a Brave Browser user enables Shields DOWN, then the browser is effectively using the traditional chess board.
If a Brave Browser user leaves Shields UP and carefully/incrementally adjusts the settings, then the browser uses its special chess board.
The other side of the chess board, is the website and its servers.
The objective is, to only allow the removal of the few chess board pieces that provide enough avenues for the website servers, to do enough of their jobs that provide enough of what Brave Browser needs to render the webpage(s).
Incremental / subtle changes in Brave Shields settings, lead to incremental / subtle differences in website payloads that are sent to the browser.
Thereby, incremental / subtle changes in Brave Shields settings have some control over what the website sends and how the Internet browser reacts.
I use Brave Shields as a firewall: Shields UP being DENY ALL - but ALLOW some traffic: the necessary traffic.
I gave the Developer Tools a try, loaded a video (split window) and watched the Tools - Console section run its course. I never saw Googleapis come up at all. What I got was a ton of these:
ERR CONNECTION REFUSED associated with gstatic-com;
&
ERR BLOCKED BY CLIENT mostly associated with YouTube-com/api/stats/;
I have 0 extensions installed/active on Brave and the same goes for Safari. Videos won’t play beyond 59 seconds in both of these browsers. Is it possible that my VPN has the extensions that are causing the problem???
If it happens with fresh Brave beta, it won’t be a Brave issue. So far the most suspicious thing will be
The only ad blocker I have is part of the VPN
Test without this VPN, there’s little gain, if anything, by layering an ad-blocking VPN. You can also try to visit jnn-pa.googleapis.com by pasting it to omni-bar and pressing return, which usually returns 404. If it’s blocked, anything that blocked this will be the culprit.
I just shared this in a reply in another post here. The WORKAROUND is simple:
Go to the YT video you want to watch
Click the SHARE button
Click the EMBED link and a split window pops up. One side is the video the other the embed code. Click play and you are off and watching. Video ran with no pausing/freezing at all. I don’t understand why this works, but it does.
The FIX is a bit more complicated but it’s meant for Windows users so I doesn’t apply to my issue but maybe others may be able to use it to find a solution?
I did try using a fresh install of Brave Beta but that didn’t work either. Still froze in the same spot. Also, two questions please:
What is an ‘omni-bar’? I’m sure this is going to be a ‘no duh’ moment for me once I’m told what it means, it’s just I’m not familiar with the terminology.
&
Would you mind explaining “there’s little gain, if anything, by layering an ad-blocking VPN.”
In addition, I did go to the suggested googleapis page and it came up 404… Wasn’t blocked. However, I did not do it with the VPN turned off, I just turned off its ad-blocker.
Would adding the suggested entries cause any security issues? Meaning, would it allow Google, Gmail, etc to attach tracking-ware and so on? Brave is currently set to ‘allow javascript’ so does adding these specific entries affect the use of javascript differently?
Oh, and on a sidetone, I was able to watch the BraveFirewall + VPN video, found here in the Brave Community site with no issues whatsoever. It seems watching the embedded version of the videos works just fine.
Any script may include code that has some contribution toward compromising privacy and security.
Over the years, the allow javascript source category has accumulated more than 1,500 entries - including the list:
[*.]firebaseapp.com
[*.]firebasedatabase.app
[*.]firebaseio.com
[*.]gmail.com
[*.]google.com
[*.]googleapis.com
[*.]googlevideo.com
[*.]googleusercontent.com
[*.]gstatic.com
[*.]youtube.com
I rely upon Brave Shields features (like the built-in adblocking, and third-party cookie blocking) to limit the hostile effects of what may be delivered from those sources.
Brave Browser and Brave Shields are not perfect. There are bugs in both. Yet I am accustomed to computer error, and I plan on there being computer error.
I routinely back up my Brave Browser installations’ data. I am always prepared to replace the BraveSoftware folder:
I’m sure I’m just missing something simple here, but for some reason I can’t add any of the above urls to the Allow Javascript section. Every time I add the above to the allow list, then close the browser, when I come back to that section, everything I entered is gone. I have the browser set to allow javascript, so I thought that may be the problem (why take entries if all are already allowed???), so I set it to do not allow and then reentered the urls… When I reopened Brave, the entries were gone again. Am I missing something?
The “omni-bar” is the URL box usually on top (sometimes bottom) of a browser. Ad-blocking VPN is only able to do domain-level blocking which is far less effective than Brave shield. If you could access the googleapis page with 404 error, that means my guess was wrong.
