How to change Firefox settings to improve YouTube performance
Does YouTube often pause and freeze when you’re watching a video? Here’s a trick that can fix the problem if you browse the web with Firefox.
YouTube accounts for a significant portion of my online activity, so I’m naturally frustrated if it doesn’t work properly. Almost every video I watch pauses after 3 seconds or requires me to play, press pause, and wait 5 minutes until the video has fully loaded before I even attempt to play it. Turns out this and other playback problems of YouTube or Flash videos may be caused by Firefox’s restore feature.
Firefox maintains a restore features that backsup your tabs and content every 10 seconds. This is great if Firefox is closed prematurely but can cause problem when trying to watch Flash-based video streams. Though I love being able to return to a previous session when I close the browser, I’d like to be able to watch videos without headaches.
Thankfully, therer’s a fix courtesy of a Lifehacker reader who had a similar problem. Here’s a plain English tutorial for how to adjust Firefox session restore.
1. Open Firefox and in the address bar, type “about:config”
You will see a message warning you that changing the advanced settings could affect your browser’s performance. This is true as a whole, but you have little to fear in this instince. Click “I’ll be good, I promise” button and continue.
2. Click on the Filter text-entry bar and type “browser.sessionstore.interval”
You should now see all other labels removed except for sessionstore.
3. Double-click on value and change it from “10000″ to “120000″
This changes Firefox from saving your session every 10 seconds to every 2 minutes. The value is stored in milliseconds, so if you want to change the autosave time, just convert the number into milliseconds (1 minute = 60,000 milliseconds).
4. Visit YouTube and confirm success
After entering your new value, visit a YouTube video that previously gave you trouble. If it plays more smoothly, enjoy! If problems continue, make sure you have installed the latest version of Flash or visit the Mozilla Support Forum for more assistance.
Also, it’s a good idea to limit the number of tabs open at once!
Filed Under: How-To
Tags: Firefox, Tutorials, YouTube
I tried your tip. Now I can’t view videos at all!!!!!!!
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Really? That’s the first I’ve heard that happening. What version of Firefox are you using?
Also, make sure you enter the number WITHOUT any commas. That might be whats causing it. If that doesn’t fix the problem, go back and restore to its original setting (10000).
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I think it’s important to note that the value that should be entered is 120000, not 12000 maybe that caused his problem, perhaps?
rm
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i tried it is working very nice…any other trick u have please share it with me.
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excellent, works great, do you have anymore tips
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I made this change in hopes that it would address the fact that Facebook freezes when I use it with Firefox. That didn’t seem to make any difference. Does anyone know if there’s a trick for that?
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Hello rob,
Can you please explain me the problem? I can sure give you the solution.
thanks
Prashanth R
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amazing!
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Oh man, this worked like a charm for me! the HD videos loads even faster now!
thank you, Mr. Andrew Kameka!
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How about int. explorer ?
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It would be nice if someone had a similar fix for Seamonkey. It does not have that variable name sadly…
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Works great! Thank you :p
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cool never knew that,
thanks
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I am using internet explorer 8 and I can’t see any videos at all. What a mess!!! Any tips ???
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hey..just update to Adobe Flash Player 10 that should fix your problem..
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Switch to Firefox.
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OMG SOooooooooooooooo Much better! Thanx! Like the other guy said; any other tips? lmao
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Well, since you guys were so interested, I’ll start looking for other useful tips. Any Firefox problems in particular you’d like addressed?
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[...] I read the writing on the wall. After posting a tip on how to improve YouTube performance in Firefox, users wanted to know what else they can do to make their browser better. Without further ado, here [...]
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Are there any sort of drawbacks to doing this? Will it affect anything else?
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omg mate you are a bloody legend !!! hd is wikd man so fast !!!
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superb works like a charm!!
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huge difference. removes all the buffering problems. Its so smooth now. many thanks
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Nice job, thnks for the info, it fixed my problems
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