No matter what app I use now for YouTube, I’m having issues with buffering. Is anyone else experiencing the same thing? Has Google finally found a way to hamper non-Premium users?
No matter what app I use now for YouTube, I’m having issues with buffering. Is anyone else experiencing the same thing? Has Google finally found a way to hamper non-Premium users?
I’d try keeping requests to a minimum, like with putting everything to download and watching those instead (e.g. with yt-dlp or Grayjay’s Watch Later playlist set to auto-download), using RSS on another device/IP (e.g. with a VPS, @birb@rss-parrot.net on Mastodon or a phone/Raspberry Pi on another connection) then forwarding over to your main device, avoiding requesting all subscriptions in a row (e.g. Grayjay’s Subscription tab or having a too aggressive refresh/fetch setting on an RSS reader), rebooting your phone when issues start (if it’s a cache/memory leak issue), and/or using a VPN and changing servers as needed.
I wrote a bash script to check for updates to channels I like. It runs nighly via cron. If there is a new video it automatically downloads it using yt-dlp to my Jellyfin library. There is a yt-dlp flag that incorporates sponsor block. Since I download videos overnight large channels have already been included by sponsor block. So I get videos completely ad and sponsor free.
Everything is done behind a VPN. This approach allows me to completely bypass using a browser further protecting me from tracking.
When I wake up in the morning I have all the new videos from my favorite channels ad and sponsor free. I can watch from my computer, phone, or TV. If I’m away from my home network I use Tailscale to stream to my location.
The only downside I experience is not getting to watch the video until the day after upload.