The Android YouTube app is driving me nuts

[Participant]

It never defaults to the highest available quality. I always have to manually select 1080p or 1440p. Sometimes it goes to 480p even when 1440p is an available option.

I have Virgin Media 200Mb broadband and have no symptoms of issues with internet speeds.

Has anyone else experienced this? What's going on?!

Note 8 with all the latest updates by the way.

 

[Donnie Fisher]

One of the settings in the app itself (not the 3 dots on the video) is something like HD on WiFi only ... So there maybe something there to change.

Are you logged in with an account ? If not then it may just be defaulting each time as there is no sign in ?

 

[Orcvader]

It's due to Google always starting at a low resolution first before upping up the resolution, but by the time that happens your fast speed internet would have already cached a fair bit of the low resolution version. Same happens on the desktop site too.

Try an alternative, I found the official app to be rather lacking.

If you want to log in with your Google account: YouTube Vanced

If you don't need Google: NewPipe

I've been using Vanced for a good while and it allows you to set a default resolution. There's also other handy features like background play, offline downloads, etc. No issues with casting either. NewPipe is great too and is also lighter, but I need my Google subscriptions so went with Vanced.

 

[Participant]

Vanced is brilliant, thanks. The only issue I've found so far is that you can't drag up in the middle of a video to see / scroll through other other suggested videos in landscape mode.

Edit - yes it does. I was obviously doing something wrong.