A few years ago, YouTube switched to a streaming protocol called Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP, or DASH for short. While it’s more efficient in most cases, it means you can only ever preload the video a few seconds ahead of your current position, no matter how fast your connection is. Luckily, it’s easy to disable.
First, you’ll need to add YouTube Center to your browser of choice, either as an extension or as a user script. Once that’s done, you’ll notice a gear icon in the upper right corner of YouTube. From this dropdown menu, go to YouTube Center Settings > Player, and uncheck Dash Playback. Now, YouTube videos will be able to preload in their entirety, which is awesome if you’re on a slow connection, or if you’re jumping around from point to point.
YouTube Center obviously has a lot else going on, so be sure to poke around once you’ve cured this particular grievance.
YouTube Center (Free) [GitHub via Ghacks]
Comments
12 responses to “Preload Entire YouTube Videos By Disabling Dash Playback”
Awesome! Great job thanks for sharing
Thank you so much the new system has been annoying me so much
Nice. Now run one about how to actually make it switch to higher quality. I use Chrome and often i’m clicking 1020p or 720p and it just keeps playing in the same crappy quality.
Theres an option in Youtube Center to make all videos play in your desired quality
Auto HD for youtube: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/auto-hd-for-youtube/koiaokdomkpjdgniimnkhgbilbjgpeak
Thank you!!!
This has been annoying the hell out of me for so long!
Yo can someone explain how to get this working on chrome? cause im having some trouble here!
Download this one, https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/youtube-center/
Got into settings on Goolge Chrome, then Extensions. Drag that File you downloaded into the extensions area and there you have it 🙂
Cool thank, got it working now 🙂
I always wondered about this, but thought it couldn’t be disabled. Thanks for sharing!
Praise god? My net connection is 3G, and I’m forever having lag and simply stoppage-that-will-not-restart issues. It got worse in April and hasn’t yet improved. Hopefully this will fix it.
Excellent, works great. Nothing like loading a video, walking out the room to grab a drink, then find it hasn’t actually done anything fff.
the extension is pretty much dead now! after having it for 2.5 months 🙁