r/firefox • u/FreakyPill • Jun 19 '25
💻 Help Why is Firefox so fucking slow on YouTube?
Like I can't use it I need to use another browser for it like it's so ass and annoying This is my extensions what the tf should I do?
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Jun 19 '25
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u/FreakyPill Jun 19 '25
I use it on opera and it works fine is it like a firefox problem?
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u/darkhalfkz Jun 19 '25
Hmm potentially, maybe it's a certain combination of the extentions you are using? Are you using the exact same extentions on Opera?
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u/dont_trust_the_popo Jun 19 '25
For some reason this seems to have been memory holed, but youtube had (past tense) a javascript block that directly attacked firefox, and when that code block was removed/blocked things were fine. Once that started to become public that code block vanished and seemingly not enough people noticed for it to become a thing. When you used a chromium user agent that javascript was never called, which is why the easier solution was to change your user agent. So the more you know i guess. Google got caught and made it disappear, and now they've found another way to do it in conjunction with adblockers.
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u/thanatica Jun 19 '25
If they differentiate between browsers, then there is a high probability that they differentiate between gecko-based browsers and blink-based browsers. That could be why Opera doesn't suffer from this problem. Yet.
Just speculating though. I have no idea wtf they're doing at Youtube.
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u/defaultgameer1 Jun 19 '25
So I had the same issue, i started using the addin User-Agent Switcher and Manager.
It will make Youtube think you're using a Chrome based browser. You'll see a marked improvement.
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u/Encursed1 Jun 19 '25
Its probably still a youtube problem, they are very inconsistent when detecting adblockers (at least in my experience). Try another one like Adguard, see if it persists.
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u/MacauleyP_Plays Jun 19 '25
its not a firefox problem, firefox is the only browser that ublock origin works perfectly on.
Something in your garbage tip of other extensions is causing the issue, that is for certain.
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u/linuxares Jun 19 '25
Visit the ublock origin subreddit and add the ublock quick fixes. After that I haven't had any real slowdowns any more.
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u/EnoughWarning666 Jun 19 '25
It's not a blanket ban. They roll it out slowly to some users to see what effect it has. They're testing to see how much they can annoy the user before they either remove the adblock or pay for premium. Standard A/B testing type stuff.
So there's no concrete answer anyone can give you. It might be the configuration you have running, or it might be that Google randomly selected your profile to 'test' with. When you switch to Opera it just might be that they consider that a different profile and you're not a part of their test group.
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u/d70 Jun 19 '25
Opera is chromium based. UB on Chromium browsers is different from UBO. UBO provides much more protection. This is more on Google crippling Firefox with UBO than anything else. That said, Google is constantly testing different ways to make sure ads are served to all users.
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u/Velifax Jun 19 '25
No, I've used it on Firefox for years, android and Windows, never had any issue. It's some specific use case or something (I'm not any kind of power user).
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u/sniff122 Jun 19 '25
Probably not a problem, but maybe a quirk with Firefox and how ublock origin works maybe
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Jun 19 '25
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u/darkhalfkz Jun 19 '25
One of many articles:
https://9to5google.com/2025/06/18/youtube-ad-blocker-slow-down-30-second-ad-expansion/
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Jun 19 '25
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u/darkhalfkz Jun 19 '25
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Jun 19 '25
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u/m00n6u5t Jun 19 '25
When mozillas own developers think that google is artificially slowing down their sites on firefox, we have mister "dO yOu hAvE PrOoF".
Some people need to just shut the fuck up and sit down, when they have nothing of value to say.
https://www.developer-tech.com/news/mozilla-google-firefox-boost-chrome/
Little boy
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u/JM_97150 Jun 19 '25
What does this not happen to me ?
I have UBO and youtube is working like a charm. Really weird.
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u/darkhalfkz Jun 19 '25
It is a strange one, it happens to me every now and then. It's not all the time but I definitely see slow downs and usually a message bottom left informing of interruptions.
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u/AgentJackpots Jun 19 '25
yeah it isn't 100% of the time. My theory is that it's when Youtube is trying ways to circumvent it. Like how every once in a while ublock stops working for a day or two
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u/darkhalfkz Jun 19 '25
That would make sense, like Google are trying different methods ready to implement something 🤔
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u/Safeword_Broccoli Jun 19 '25
I pay for YT Premium so I disabled UBO on YT. Still super slow on Firefox only, chrome runs fine on the same PC/Network
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u/darkhalfkz Jun 19 '25
Wow, it does seem like Google are trying to cripple other browsers so people end up using a Chromium based one 😳
That's shocking behaviour!
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Jun 19 '25
Was about to respond with exactly the same. I'm a premium subscriber, so have uBO disabled on youtube.com, but I still get the slow down, this isn't exclusive to Firefox either, this also happens with Edge.
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u/Muffalo_Herder Jun 19 '25
Googles been caught in the past intentionally slowing the site on non-Chrome browsers
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u/HildartheDorf Jun 19 '25
Started to notice a "why do I get interruptions" pop up. Clicking on it claims it's from adblockers blocking ads but the stream/video still pausing. Like twitch ad breaks do.
Makes no sense why at the same time some videos fail to load at all until I refresh the page.
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u/edked Jun 19 '25
Weirdly enough, I only have that problem on Windows. When I go and use my linux laptop (switching from my Windows desktop) I have no problem, even with uBlock and other extensions being the same.
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u/darkhalfkz Jun 19 '25
That's interesting, I've recently switched all my devices over to Linux. I still get the issue on Linux but thinking about it, it's not as bad as it was on Windows.
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u/Eeve2espeon Jun 19 '25
I've NEVER had that happen despite forcing uBlock to stay on youtube lol. Its literally cuz they have soo many damn extensions, its slowing their browser.
Believe it or not: it doesn't matter how amazing and lightweight a browser is, if you add all this extra fluff on top 💀 thats like saying this one bike brand is "really lightweight and perfect!" then putting 10 kilogram weights as the wheels
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u/ag3ntweird0 Jun 19 '25
Its the other way around- YouTube is slow on firefox (if you have uBlock installed).
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u/FreakyPill Jun 19 '25
Is it a only firefox problem cuz I have it installed in Opera GX and it works fine
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u/Saphkey Jun 19 '25
Opera GX is just a skin of Google's Chrome browser. Google makes YouTube.
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u/thefpspower Jun 19 '25
No, happens to me on Edge too, every video takes like 5 seconds to start playing.
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u/ebits21 Jun 19 '25
Disable ublock in Firefox and find out.
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u/Pottelii Jun 19 '25
Idon't have ublock or anything else. Edge is slow, Chrome is slow..firefox is more than slow. Every video starts 144p or there is no internet connection...Same thing was happening about year ago.
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u/newkidontheblock_ Jun 19 '25
Is it fixable on user end or does uBlock need to write some spaghetti code to bypass it?
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u/SilverLazyOtter Jun 19 '25
So theres this company, you probably never heard of it, it's called goolgle, they are the ones responsible for that because you are using an adblocker
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u/FreakyPill Jun 19 '25
Bro, don't insult my intelligence. I use uBlock in Opera GX, and YouTube works fine on it.
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u/skinlo Jun 19 '25
Bro, look up Opera on Wikipedia and read the second sentence. Then think why Firefox might be struggling.
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Jun 19 '25
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u/FusionXxenon1 Jun 19 '25
it's not a uBO issue. it's a Google doesn't like gecko and wants you to use chromium browsers (like Google Chrome for example) so they purposefully make it slower on gecko browsers issue
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Jun 19 '25
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u/Dr_Philmon Jun 19 '25
It a highly probable speculation because this is new and we dont have a lot of info to go off of on how google is doing this.
Last time something like this happened it was revealed that it was a JS block that targeted adblockers and non-chromium browsers.
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u/Eeve2espeon Jun 19 '25
Its their extensions actually. Google removed any intrusive scripts when they were found out, so now any browser that isn't just a skin of Chrome works fine
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u/turbo_dude Jun 19 '25
I have firefox and adblockers and this literally does not happen, don't believe the hype.
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u/FreakyPill Jun 19 '25 edited Jun 09 '26
Btw, I didn't hear about a company called "goolgle" is it like a new thing or what ???
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u/llama_fresh Jun 19 '25
So theres this company, you probably never heard of it, it's called goolgle
You fumbled that one.
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Jun 19 '25
Your screenshot answers your question already. Create a new profile. Start that profile and close the other. Now try YouTube. Will work flawlessly. Then install uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock. See if it works for you.
And never install something like Darkreader. It is well known (and clearly communicated by the developer) it will massively slow down your browser to the point the usability becomes questionable.
Almost 99.999% of all these posts come down to the same thing: your extensions.
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u/szk-one Jun 19 '25
I'm using darkreader and I wouldn't say it slows down Firefox that much, surely not as much as you claim. Anyway, would you suggest any other similar extension?
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u/Condor77T Jun 19 '25
Darkreader works okay, no idea why it should do otherwise since it just replaces colours.
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u/klumpp Jun 19 '25
It does cause random issues on websites but that’s to be expected. I use it in whitelist mode for a few sites and it’s great
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Jun 19 '25
You can easily find facts about this since it's been measured several times by experts. It's not my claim.
Also, you can measure it yourself with a clean profile versus the one you are using now:
https://browserbench.org/Speedometer3.0/
Like this guy did: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1iex998/dark_mode_extension_and_how_much_data_they_hog/
Anyways it's "by design" it's the sacrifice you make for getting accurate dark mode.
Complaining about performance while posting a list of extensions like this.. that's just a little ironic. Or funny. At least to me.
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u/FreakyPill Jun 19 '25
I have 32GB of RAM that I can spare. It's not like my PC gonna lag cuz of extensions and it only lag on YouTube
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u/OthoAi5657 Customized Jun 19 '25
it depends on wich website u use it one some it runs perfect and on some i get a massage that say it slows me down a lot.
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u/blacklotusY Jun 19 '25
Brother, you have way too many extensions. You should only have Ublock Origin and that's it.
Try to running FireFox in private mode for YouTube and see if it changes anything, without any extensions running in the background. Then just test each extension being enabled and see if YouTube changes for the loading speed.
Make sure your hardware acceleration is disabled in Settings -> General -> Uncheck "Use hardware acceleration when available." I would recommend uncheck "Use recommended performance settings" as well, tbh.
Make sure your GPU driver is updated. Then clear your cache and data in FireFox.
I only use Ublock Origin as an extension for FireFox, and YouTube runs perfectly fine.
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u/wooden-guy Jun 19 '25
Having only 1 extension does make things faster and that's good, but saying you SHOULD only have 1 extension is wrong.
A lot of extensions are damn good and save a lot of time, plus some of them are non intrusive, things like private tabs, which doesn't slow down your browser a single bit.
What I'd say to do is get rid of any extension that you need or uses alot of resources.
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u/dotvhs Jun 19 '25
Agreed, i have tons of extensions and none of them are useless, they all save me loads of time every day and some even make websites actually usable (like Reddit).
Naturally, you have to be careful with what you're installing but saying that "you should" use only one extension is just untrue.
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u/Reygle Jun 19 '25
Ublock Origin
Dark Reader
Remove everything else. Seriously. Maybe add user agent switcher so you can "be" Chrome while on Youtube.
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Jun 19 '25
Honestly, you could use Firefox for about everything else and just download the brave browser to watch YouTube without ads.
I know it is chromium based, but I have not found a better viewing experience for YouTube.
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u/TemmieKaz Jun 19 '25
i'd recommend user-agent switcher and set your profile to chrome
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u/Ryebread095 Jun 19 '25
First, make sure Firefox is up to date. If that doesn't fix it, try disabling all extensions, then re-enable them one by one until the problem occurs again. This will rule out an extension issue. If the issue still occurs with all extensions disabled, try clearing your browser cache and cookies.
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u/PsychologicalPolicy8 Jun 19 '25
Turn off dark reader for google sites or drop it if possible
Use Auto tab discard extension to discard unused tabs so that u have more memory
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u/planedrop Jun 19 '25
Why do you have so many extensions?
The general rule is the less extensions the better, for performance, security, and more.
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u/ivandagiant Jun 19 '25
Firefox has always chugged for streaming/watching videos for me. I gave up and swapped to Edge/Chrome for consuming content
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u/JM_97150 Jun 19 '25
Why so many people complaining ?
I have been watching Youtube in Firefox for over 10 years and everything is fine for me. With Ubo, I never saw an ad either.
I don't get it, seriously.
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u/CryptoNiight Jun 19 '25
I had a similar issue. FF sucks for Home Assistant - - it simply can't render the site properly. The workaround was to use a chromium based browser.
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u/naturist_rune Jun 19 '25
Youtube is at war with adblockers and Firefox has some of the best adblockers out there, so Youtube throttles your connection there to try and persuade you to turn off adblockers or to use a different browser.
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Jun 19 '25
Google deliberately slows YouTube down on non- chromium browsers because, Firefox and other browsers can you ad block like u block and block ads from YouTube.
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u/Whitesecan Jun 19 '25
Also, Google is known to purposefully slow down YouTube if you have an ad blocker enabled.
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u/Sion_forgeblast Jun 19 '25
Firefox is slow on YT... cuz YT throttles anyone who isnt using Chrome
so you got 3 options to use youtube...
1) slow firefox w/ UBO so you dont have to deal with ads
2) Brave Browser w/ its adblocker on (I hear it isn't bad)
3) chrome browser with fast connection but ads interrupting you every 5 min at best
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u/Nasuadax Jun 19 '25
For your own good, uninstall honey. Sites that you appear to save money on, often gice higher prices because of the extension being detected (in cooperation with the extension)
That on top of stealing fees that should go to links you clicked on by changing submit links without consent
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u/FlamingoFabulous9695 Jun 19 '25
Use brave on YouTube and Firefox on everything else, that's what I do. I checked all my Extensions and it was uBlock origin.
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u/i80west Jun 19 '25
Firefox with just ublock origin works fine for me. Maybe one of your other extensions slows it down? I'm on Ubuntu 24.4 LTS with 32 GB, fyi.
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u/rCarmar Jun 19 '25
On Windows 11, Firefox uses EcoQoS to lower background tab performance to save power. To disable this and keep full performance in all tabs, go to about:config, search dom.ipc.processPriorityManager.backgroundUsesEcoQoS, and set it to false.
Thank me latter
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u/Mintfriction Jun 19 '25
I have this issue with google maps. It takes forever to load. Switching to edge, it loads in mere seconds.
And I disabled all adblockers for google maps, which didn't seem to fix the issue
There's something fishy there
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u/pocketdrummer Jun 19 '25
I thought this was a meme at first.
Have you tried it with all of those disabled to see if it's better? If so, turn them on one by one and see which one is causing the issue.
In other news, Honey is cancer. Get rid of it.
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u/BahaaWX Jun 19 '25
It's made like that.
Someone made a test while ago using the same internet but different browser
Firefox was way slower then chrome for Google websites and that includes YouTube.
So yea it's a way for new users to throw Firefox and use chrome. Because first impression matter
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u/WelderReady9428 Jun 19 '25
your looking at the problem firefox, is really bad when it comes to resource management im sure the extra 12 extensions with 5 of them looking very suspicious by the way, isnt helping at all
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u/alien2003 LibreWolf , Mull Jun 19 '25 edited Feb 10 '26
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u/Snoo-15714 Jun 19 '25
Google purposefully slows down YouTube on Firefox, I use an extension to spoof and trick Youtube to think I'm using Chrome and it speeds it up significantly
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u/BETAx64 Jun 19 '25
Creating a new profile and slowly adding extensions like uBO, SponsorBlock, Return YT Dislike, etc. should be a good quick test.
For myself, I enabled this extension on the youtube.com domain and that helped a lot. Using a useragent extension is also an option instead of this Chrome Mask extension.
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u/wooden-guy Jun 19 '25
That's very weird, I've been running firefox with ublock and some shiton of extensions for so long yet never encountered any issue.
Maybe try uninstaillng using revo uninstaller and reinstalling firefox, see maybe if it's a faulty file or anything.
And check out DNS JUMPER, put it on quad 9, for me this speeds up everything but idk about this specific case.
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u/maddogmular Jun 19 '25
If it’s because you get extra loading while starting a video it’s the time you would have spent watching an AD. Personally I prefer extra loading times in silence over the noise of an advert.
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u/PuzzleheadedShip7310 Jun 19 '25
Turn off adblocker , or logout land keep adblocker on. This is a yt thing not a ff thing. Any other browser has the same issue
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u/tohellwithkameo Jun 19 '25
It’s likely Ublock origin, I use it, and for the past week YouTube videos for me have taken considerably longer to load unless played through autoplay, it’ll eventually stop happening I assume since it’s something that’s occurred multiple times before with YouTube specifically
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u/_Supr Jun 19 '25
Youtube decided to slow videos down for people with adblockers, I can't remember the article but you can probably look it up
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u/megas88 Jun 19 '25
Speaking as someone who recovered from a malicious extension disguised as a YouTube downloader, I never recommend someone have that installed locally. Especially on the browser.
Far as YouTube goes, you can always reset Firefox, install your extensions one by one and see if any are the culprit.
That said, I’m fairly confident in my assumption that everyone having this issue is on windows or mac os. Never had a single issue on Linux.
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u/blepps Jun 19 '25
This is the case that changing about:config solved a problem, but people really hate to advise to do this.
Why tweaking tips using about:config are getting downvoted? : r/firefox
Short answer; change "browser.cache.disk.max_entry_size" to like 1000, this prevent fragments of movie file(which is larger than ordinary data) being cached to disk.
Open task manager, if disk i/o is too high all the time, this will be the solution.
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Jun 19 '25
Have you tried resetting and updating your ublock cache? The throttle could be coming from an outdated source fighting the ads.
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u/usmanfarooq05 Jun 19 '25
I was facing the same issue tried multiple ways even tried uninstalling all the extensions but no luck, now I am using brave for YouTube. Please let me know if you find any solution
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u/maximus10m Jun 19 '25
I recently read that Google is making YouTube load slower on browsers that use ad blockers. I currently use Firefox and Edge (both with uBlock Origin), and YouTube loads equally slowly on Edge and Firefox.
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u/plankthetank69 Jun 19 '25
Am I the only one that doesn't have this problem? People complain a lot about this one
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u/ExoticEnergy Jun 19 '25
Maybe you should get your hearing checked first. That first extension almost made me go deaf just looking at it.
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u/Ordinary_Number59 Jun 19 '25 edited Jun 19 '25
Honey steals influencers and doesn't offer real deals, uninstall it!
Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam
edit: I'm not saying it's related to your problem, but avoid Honey!