Since a few days I have an issue that Youtube video's don't start, the screen remains black, the time indicator flashes between 0:00 and length of the video, and the CC button also flashes between on and off. When I press the reload page button then the video starts playing.

Is anybody else also experiencing this?

Update: Cleaning the cache and cookies completely has fixed it for me. After the cleaning I needed to login again on Youtube and videos play again on first attempt.

Hi guys, has anybody here encountered the problem where auto-play doesnt seem to work, and you have to press refresh everytime it moves on to the next video? The loading bar just stops as in the photo.

Is this another attempt by yt devs to annoy us into stop using Brave?

Updated Arch Linux and works fine now. [Solved]

I ran an update in Arch and I see gstreamer and gst-plugins got updated now works fine

v1.88.134 (Mar 19, 2026)

Occurs intermittently. No issue on Chrome or Edge.

EDIT: Turning off the Brave shield for Youtube as u/tbfl suggested is a successful, but not ideal, workaround.

Youtube is not working anymore on the browser any fix?

just tried to watch something on youtube using brave, welp its broken, youtube now detects whatever brave was running and now getting errors. 1st time ever having this happen so yeah youtube can kiss the dark side of the moon. hope brave fixes this very soon.

I try to load YouTube, but it doesn't load. I really need help, I don't know why

This error occurs on brave even when shield is turned off.
Only Semi-fix so far is to log out of account or use a different browser.

Shorts on Brave mobile also have an issue where ~50% of the time, the short freezes on the first frame.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Made a script to "fix" the issue - you can use it with Brave's scriptlet feature.

All this does is check for the Youtube error, and auto-reload when the error is detected, so you don't have to do it manually everytime. Especially useful for playlists. It's just a duct tape solution until the proper fix is released.

Open Brave's Shields Filter Settings

1. Open Brave browser

2. In the address bar, type brave://settings/shields/filters and press Enter

Add the Scriptlet

1. Scroll down until you see the Developer Mode toggle - Enable it.

2. Scroll down until you see the Custom scriptlets section

3. Click the "Add new scriptlet" button

4. In the Name field, type: youtube-auto-reload

5. In the large code box below it, paste the entire script (script's under the instructions)

6. Click Save

Activate it on YouTube

1. Scroll up to the Custom filters section

2. In the text box, add this: www.youtube.com##+js(user-youtube-auto-reload)

3. Click Save

How to disable it temporarily

1. Go to brave://adblock → Custom filters

2. Put a ! at the start of the line to comment it out: ! www.youtube.com##+js(user-youtube-auto-reload)

3. Click Save. Remove the ! to re-enable it

This is the script. *This won't help if refreshing doesn't work for you already.

(function () { const 
SaveERROR_SELECTOR = '.ytp-error-content-wrap-reason'; const RELOAD_DELAY_MS = 3000;
let reloadScheduled = false;
function showToast(seconds) { const existing = document.getElementById('ytar-toast'); if (existing) existing.remove();
const toast = document.createElement('div');
toast.id = 'ytar-toast';
toast.textContent = `YouTube playback error detected. Reloading in ${seconds}s...`;
Object.assign(toast.style, {
  position: 'fixed',
  bottom: '32px',
  left: '50%',
  transform: 'translateX(-50%)',
  background: 'rgba(180, 20, 20, 0.92)',
  color: '#fff',
  padding: '12px 24px',
  borderRadius: '8px',
  fontSize: '15px',
  fontFamily: 'Roboto, Arial, sans-serif',
  zIndex: '999999',
  boxShadow: '0 4px 16px rgba(0,0,0,0.4)',
  pointerEvents: 'none',
  transition: 'opacity 0.3s ease',
  opacity: '1',
});
document.body.appendChild(toast);

let remaining = seconds - 1;
const interval = setInterval(() => {
  if (remaining <= 0) { clearInterval(interval); toast.style.opacity = '0'; return; }
  toast.textContent = `YouTube playback error detected. Reloading in ${remaining}s...`;
  remaining--;
}, 1000);
}
function scheduleReload() { if (reloadScheduled) return; reloadScheduled = true; showToast(RELOAD_DELAY_MS / 1000); setTimeout(() => window.location.reload(), RELOAD_DELAY_MS); }
function start() { const observer = new MutationObserver(() => { if (document.querySelector(ERROR_SELECTOR)) scheduleReload(); }); observer.observe(document.documentElement, { childList: true, subtree: true }); }
if (document.body) { start(); } else { document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', start); } })(); 

Since last night, YouTube videos have started showing errors. The first signs were that videos wouldn't load, the progress bar was glitching, and the message “Experiencing interruptions? Find out why” appeared.

This morning, several videos appeared as if they had been marked as hidden or private. On another video, even the comments were disabled. In the latter case, different symptoms appeared each time the page was reloaded.

Note: Yes, the same video that appears as unavailable loads when you disable the ad blockers. And the first ad is almost always for YouTube Premium.

Also, turning the ad blockers off and on again usually makes everything “look normal.”

UPDATE: The shields pop-up showed me a message to enable an Adblock-only mode. The videos are starting to work again.

Hi everyone, Reddit put down my first post but I swear im not a bot! here's my issue:

I've been using brave for like 2 months now and it's been great until now... I wanted to watch some videos while im eating on yt but is not loading properly and its been like that for past hour, I tried the extension method with ublock origin and some kind of code but it doesn't work, I cleared the cache and is still like that, I wanted to see if there's some kind of error in the code but it has the same behavior and the error icon on inspection, goes up every second, has anyone had this same problem? I need a solution, I've been loving brave so far and I don't want to uninstall it and migrate all my info again to a new browser :(

Hello! Weird situation going on with youtube that I was hoping to get some help on real quick. When I open up a video on youtube it opens up like normal, but, the screen is just the preview with a big "play" button in the middle of it. If I refresh the page it fixes itself but I have to do that for EVERY video. I'm just wondering why it's not automatically playing (I know youtube was having some issues earlier but I wasn't too sure if that has affected this)

Is this something that's going on for everyone right now or is it just something that's happening for me? I'm on Windows 11 chrome for it.

Edit - Okay to add onto this. I tried an incognito browser and videos (while delayed a little) loaded like normal. It seems to only be with my account logged in on my main browser then in that case. If anyone else is dealing with this same problem/has a solution please let me know!

Anyone else experiencing playback interruptions as of last 24 hours??

Videos will load but they're not instant anymore, keeps spasm-ing?

To add further context: Only happening to long form vids, shorts seem fine. Not every video is experiencing this. I've cleared history/cache a couple of days ago for other reasons.

Any workaround/suggestions are welcomed!

Additional info; Today is day 2 (4th March), I've disabled UBlock Origin for YOutube for now, I've copied my scripts over to the regular Brave Shield and it works fine FOR NOW.

Today is many days later (8th March), Brave team has changed flair to "will be fixed in next release" or something along the lines of that. My current workaround is to switch off UBlock Origin and just stick to Brave Shield. It's not perfect, there are still "are you experiencing interruptions" popping up, and videos dont load instantly, but good enough (though 3 ~ 10 seconds in, depending on luck, might be instant enough for alot of people).

Will be sticking out with this setup till next patch i guess.

Yesterday everything was fine, but today something is wrong. Youtube videos take forever to start. Is someone else expierencing the same? Is it the website? Is it my Browser?

Any other videos load fine, just not ones on YouTube. I checked YouTube on Chrome and it works fine there so it's definitely Brave doing it. Works fine with shields down.
Edit: Going to brave://components and updating the Brave Ad Block Updater fixed it for me.

This morning I cant play videos on Youtube. Last night it was fine. How to fix this?

UPDATE: it works now. I didnt do anything.