Chrome keeps lowering youtube resolution

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smodtactical

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 26, 2010
Messages
181
I am on win10 with latest version of chrome and every video I go to, the default resolution is the lowest and I have to manually raise the resolution for every video I watch.

I see no options to keep youtube in HD mode by default. I tried downloading several youtube HD chrome extensions but none of them work.

Any idea how to fix this?
 
Pretty sure what you are observing is the stream adaptively adjusting resolution based on the quality of the connection between the browser and streaming servers. I've noticed on weaker connections, it almost always starts with a low res then over time will switch to a higher one (the highest based on what it thinks would not cause excessive buffering). It may even drop to a lower res later on if it detects potential buffering issues.

The assumption is that this behavior is "Auto" quality mode and switching manually makes it a permanent. Auto is clearly the default mode.

So the question is does/can switching manually from Auto to a target resolution/quality be made permanent?

In my experience, the answer is sort of. If you manually switch it, it seems to hold, for a time. It may "forget" it after a few days or even when you walk away and come back.

Across the board, having a manual preference tends to be wobbly. It seems, at least for Youtube, it always wants to go back to the default (Auto). There may be some extensions out there that try to fool it or manually set it for you, but I'm not aware of them.

Then again, it may be that Auto is jacked up for you.

Edit: Also, if you're using Incognito mode it will forget any notion of preference as soon as you close the browser window.
 
Last edited:
I've seen this before too; different browsers will play the "Auto" bitrate at different settings.

Just manually set your bitrate. I always do.
 
Absalom said:
Pretty sure what you are observing is the stream adaptively adjusting resolution based on the quality of the connection between the browser and streaming servers. I've noticed on weaker connections, it almost always starts with a low res then over time will switch to a higher one (the highest based on what it thinks would not cause excessive buffering). It may even drop to a lower res later on if it detects potential buffering issues.

The assumption is that this behavior is "Auto" quality mode and switching manually makes it a permanent. Auto is clearly the default mode.

So the question is does/can switching manually from Auto to a target resolution/quality be made permanent?

In my experience, the answer is sort of. If you manually switch it, it seems to hold, for a time. It may "forget" it after a few days or even when you walk away and come back.

Across the board, having a manual preference tends to be wobbly. It seems, at least for Youtube, it always wants to go back to the default (Auto). There may be some extensions out there that try to fool it or manually set it for you, but I'm not aware of them.

Then again, it may be that Auto is jacked up for you.

Edit: Also, if you're using Incognito mode it will forget any notion of preference as soon as you close the browser window.
Click to expand...

So in firefox it always plays HD. I also have gigabit internet.
 
bigdogchris said:
I've seen this before too; different browsers will play the "Auto" bitrate at different settings.

Just manually set your bitrate. I always do.
Click to expand...

Setting my resolution for every video manually is quite annoying, is this what you mean ?
 
This is still happening. I have to resort to using firefox. Any ideas how to fix?

I guess I could just totally switch to firefox.
 
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