Firefox @lemmy.world CrayonRosary @lemmy.world 10mo ago

[Fixed maybe?] YouTube hasn't worked in Firefox for me for weeks

EDIT: It's something to do with my VPN and/or EasyTether, but it only happens in Firefox, so I didn't think that could be it. I commented about my findings below: https://lemmy.world/comment/7585497

I start a video and it either doesn't load at all of stalls within 5 seconds, never to recover.

I've tried everything:

Deleting every Mozilla folder in AppData to completely refresh Firefox. (after backing up my profile)
Flushing DNS cache
Uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox. (Which made me remember I had a policies.json file in the program folder to permanently lockdown the settings I want. So that wasn't the problem either.)

Even when using no extensions like an ad blockers it still won't play videos. Besides, I'm a Premium subscriber. Once in a while a video will work, but it's so, so rare. And often it'll even stop after a minute.

Meanwhile, it'll work in the DuckDuckGo Browser all the time, which is Chromium based.

What do you think the deal is? It broke rather suddenly a few weeks ago. Do you think it's Mozilla's fault, or Google's?

12 comments

I have no idea... I use YT in FF on both Linux and Windows every day and have not had any problems with it.
This has also been happening to me, but it's inconsistent. I have been using FreeTube instead of a browser for links to get around the issue.
Not really helpful if you need to access the account but have you tried Piped or Invidious
Try looking in the network panel to see if any resources are failing to load? Any chance FF sync is installing extensions that are interfering?
- Thank you for reminding me of that. Yes, I'm getting a bunch of NS_BINDING_ABORTED errors on about 1/3 to 1/2 of the requests to googlevideo.com.
  
  From what I can tell, it's an error you get when a javascript binding is deleted because you navigated away from a page before the event finished. This happens continuously, and the duration of these requests is 0 ms. Seems like it's related to DASH video and how a lot of little requests are used to download small segments of video.
  
  I've done some experimenting, and I think it's the fault of my VPN and how I get internet on my PC. I use EasyTether to get internet through my phone without paying for tethering, and Mullvad VPN. I use the VPN on my phone, so that my carrier doesn't see my PC traffic nor my phone traffic.
  
  Ironically, YouTube works if I use the VPN on my PC instead, or if I run it on both! No idea why it's acting strangely, and why it only causes issues in Firefox.
Back in the Fall of 2023, I was trying some things to mitigate the infamous YouTube ad-blocker restrictions. Prior to that, I had been using the "Enhancer for YouTube" extension, but later disabled it via "uBlock Origin's" recommended workaround for the ad-blocker restrictions.

I was also testing some things with "NoScript", but found it caused some websites to not load. It's now disabled as well.

Luckily, "uBlock Origin" seems to have solved the problem in an update I received in December, I think.

If you've been doing anything like what I just described, try disabling or uninstalling every extension except "uBlock Origin" and make sure you have the latest version. If that doesn't work, try restoring default settings or disabling/uninstalling uBlock Origin and go from there.

Otherwise, I suspect you might have a bad cache, but it wouldn't hurt to go through this list from top to bottom just to be sure you don't miss something. The article is from 2021, so if the details don't align with your current version of Firefox, etc, just look up how to do the same thing it recommends, only with updated instructions. https://techwiser.com/fix-youtube-not-working-firefox/
- Like I said, I wiped everything and reinstalled, and it still didn't help. It's not an extension issue.
  
  I think it's a VPN issue. You can read my update, but it doesn't make any sense why one browser would be find and another wouldn't if it's a VPN issue. That's why I never thought to test that.
  
  Ok, I wasn’t sure if you were using the Firefox Sync features or if you were restoring any of your backed up files pre/post reinstallation, which is why I brought it up again.
Just a guess... Try different settings in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/dns-over-https (I.e. try Max Protection and Off; either might help.) I've had problems with it interfering with VPN.

Another random idea... See if it happens with older versions of Firefox. Maybe they pushed an update in the past few weeks that changed something.

You might find more info in the Firefox developer console (as opposed to the network tab) if you haven't checked there already.

If I were debugging this, my next steps would be Wireshark, Postman proxy, or Burp proxy, to see what's actually happening to the packets that are failing.
- Thanks for the tip. Secure DNS settings didn't change the behavior. I can look into Wireshark or something. I've used Fiddler in the past to inspect unpublished APIs.
- For what it's worth, my gut feeling when I read the symptoms was that packets were getting misrouted. I had a similar issue when my NAT was misconfigured, so packets were going out the clear net but with the VPN's source IP. If so, it would appear as if packets were getting dropped. Those half-open connnections could conceivably cause ns_binding_abort, since the browser is making lots of requests but many of them never get responses. Maybe.
  
  Some other random tidbits, in case they're helpful:
  
  When I ran OpenVPN on Android and tethered my PC, the tethered traffic didn't go over VPN, only traffic originating from the phone did. From what I recall, that was normal on Android. Maybe Mullvad and/or EasyTether changes that. But maybe they don't change it reliably? I have no idea why that would be Firefox specific, though. You could try ipleak.net to see if it gives you any clues about traffic leaking from your VPN.
  
  I also recall that some mobile carriers use the TTL on packets to detect tethering. I believe there's an Android setting that affects that behavior, which you can set with ADB. If the carrier detects that your packets' TTLs are lower than they should be, they might drop the packets. Again, I have no idea why that would be Firefox specific or sporadic.
  
  Good luck!
Try disabling hardware acceleration? I think it's turned on by default.

If you haven't already, try on a different youtube account.

If that doesn't work, Have you tried doing all 3 of those things you've listed at the same time?

Do you have other devices in your household, and if so do they have the same issue?

If yes, you might want to check your router settings, or factory reset it. If that still doesn't work it may be an issue with your ISP.

If no, you may need to reinstall Windows if no one else can provide a good solution. You can always try a virtual machine to test and see if it works there first.
- Yes, Hardware Acceleration was going to be my next suggestion as well.
Firefox works just as well as it always does with YouTube for me, as a second class citizen compared to any Chromium browser.

Have you installed Firefox to an alternate folder to test? Or tried a Firefox alternate, like Waterfox?

I assume you're testing with massively popular videos that undoubtedly are cached through the entire CDN already, not a small video with 5 views stored on a single random server somewhere?
I'm having problems with YouTube in all browsers and in android app. Seems like YouTube is having some issues these days.
I've been having sound issues myself. My speakers won't get even halfway as loud on Firefox compared to Chrome. I'm not sure. It works just fine for any other website like Netflix or hulu. Just YouTube and YouTube music seems to have the sound issues

12 comments