YouTube slows Firefox – Recently there has been a rumour spreading around about how YouTube is slow in Firefox in contrast to when it’s being opened in Chrome or any Chromium-based browsers. Many people suspect that this might be a deliberate attempt from Google considering the current “war” between Google Chrome and YouTube with various ad-blocking add-on plugins which result in people opting for its competitor instead, one of them being Mozilla Firefox.
The suspicion was first brought to light by 9to5Google where they mentioned a Reddit user vk6_ found out that there was a significant delay for YouTube to load when using Firefox. For a few seconds the page is mostly just a blank, with only a handful of background elements showing but no content to accompany it, yet, after a few seconds, the page loads up as usual.
The suspicion
While it might be easy to put the blame on connection issues, apparently it might be deeper than that as plenty of other users found out that the load time is dramatically faster when using other Chromium-based browsers.
In the now-deleted Reddit post, the user vk6_ has also pointed out that by spoofing Firefox’s user agent to Chrome, the page actually loads in just less than a second. Further digging also found out that Google might implement a five-second delay inside their JavaScript code for YouTube desktop.
Android Authority has claimed that the code does exist when opening YouTube, however, it is still uncertain whether the highlighted code does play a role in Google slowing down YouTube’s performance on Firefox. One thing that is certain though is that by filtering out the said code, it seems to show that the performance does increase.
YouTube Response
As of 21 November 2023, YouTube has posted a clarification confirming that the issue is related to ad blockers and not to the browser itself:
“To support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favorite content on YouTube, we’ve launched an effort to urge viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad free experience. Users who have ad blockers installed may experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using.”
YouTube also encourages those who use ad blockers to “allow ads on YouTube or sign up for YouTube Premium. If you continue to use ad blockers, we may block your video playback.”
But for those who still don’t want to allow ads, here’s how to mitigate this
1. Keeping uBlock Origin updated
While there may be several ad blockers that accomplish the same job, we personally recommend uBlock Origin as it just works. However, due to the current war between Google and ad blockers, the web may occasionally break due to YouTube patching its loophole.
This could be easily fixed by updating the filter database. To update the uBlock Origin filter,, go to Settings > Extensions & Themes > Press the Triple Dots on uBlock Origin and go to Options
After opening the Options, proceed to the Filter Lists tab then press “Purge all caches”. This will force uBlock to delete all its filter caches including the obsolete one.
Once all caches have been purged, simply press “Update now” and wait for a few seconds until the “clock icons” beside each filter turn green. Refresh the YouTube page and the issue should be resolved.
2. Use User-Agent Switcher by Erin Schlarb
If for whatever reason the issue still persists, you might want to spoof Firefox with User Agent Switcher. The add-on can be found on the Firefox add-ons page.
After downloading and installing the add-on, just press the Extensions menu > click the User-Agent Switcher > pick one of the options under the “Desktop” menu.
Bottom line:
Recently there have been rumours that YouTube slowing Firefox by adding a JavaScript code that delays non-Chromium users when opening YouTube resulting in YouTube slow in Firefox. Google, through YouTube, has clarified that the possible reason for this performance issue might be caused by the usage of ad blockers as recently Google has been actively fighting ad blockers on their platform.
A YouTube Firefox fix has been made to tackle this issue. Two possible methods are regularly updating your ad blocker filters database as well as switching the user-agent as some users found out there is an increase in performance by spoofing Firefox to other browsers.
