Disable hardware acceleration

If the problem happens when viewing videos in full-screen, then this is likely a YouTube bug Google has been investigating for more than a year. (Here's a bug report we found.) Turning off hardware acceleration fixes the issue. Here's how:


Disable hardware acceleration (Flash Player)

  1. In normal viewing mode (that is, not full-screen), right-click the video to show the video context menu.
  2. If the menu says "About Adobe Flash Player" at the bottom, then you're using the Flash player and this method will work. Otherwise, skip to "Disable hardware acceleration (HTML5 Player in Chrome)" below.
  3. Click Settings.
  4. Clear the Enable hardware acceleration checkbox.
  5. Click Close.
  6. Restart your browser.


Disable hardware acceleration (HTML5 Player in Chrome)

  1. Enter chrome://settings in the address bar.
  2. Scroll to the bottom of Chrome's settings page and click Advanced.
  3. Scroll to the bottom of Chrome's advanced settings page.
  4. In the System section, slide the Use hardware acceleration when available toggle to off.
  5. Click RELAUNCH to restart Chrome.


If that doesn't fix the problem, also do this:

  1. Enter chrome://flags in the address bar.
  2. Press Ctrl+F to open Chrome's search box, and then type hardware-accelerated to find the hardware-accelerated video decode setting.
  3. Click Enable to toggle it off.
  4. Click RELAUNCH NOW to restart Chrome.