Hey everyone, I'm having a frustrating issue where all my browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge) are running really slow on my computer. It's odd because some websites load fine, like Reddit, but others, especially YouTube, take forever to load videos. Thumbnails and comments load fine, but the videos seem to default to 144p and often just won't load at all, despite my internet connection being fine and having enough storage.
I've tried several fixes—disabled/uninstalled AdBlock, turned off hardware acceleration, reset my router and my device, closed almost all tabs, cleared browser caches, and ran malware detection—but nothing seems to help. This issue just started happening out of the blue and nothing has changed on my end. Has anyone else experienced something similar? Any suggestions on what could be the cause?
5 Answers
Hey, I totally get your frustration! It sounds like it might be a YouTube issue specifically, as I’ve had similar slowdowns. It could be temporary on their end, so maybe just hold tight for a while and see if it improves. But yeah, it really does suck waiting for videos to load!
How much RAM do you have on your machine? Sometimes that can affect browser performance, especially if you have a lot of tabs open.
I've got 8 GB of RAM, but I thought that should be enough? What do you think?
What operating system are you using? Is it a desktop or laptop? Sometimes recent updates can mess things up, so that might be the case here. It might help to check if there’s been a recent Windows update that coincided with your slowdown.
I'm on Windows 22H2 and using a laptop. I did update recently but can’t remember if it started acting up after that.
You might want to check your internet connection or see if any background applications are eating up resources. The Task Manager should give you a good idea of what's happening there!
Have you considered trying the Brave browser? It's a lot like Chrome but tends to manage resources better, which might help with the sluggishness.
It's not just YouTube for me either. Other websites have been slow too, so there might be something else going on.