# YouTube not working in Firefox



## neelwebs (Mar 22, 2013)

I use Firefox on FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE, and use Flash player through nspluginwrapper and Linux emulation. Since yesterday, YouTube videos haven't worked on Firefox. I know that flash player works on Firefox, I don't have gnash, and YouTube works in Opera.
Is there a solution to this problem (Other than changing my browser)?


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## wblock@ (Mar 22, 2013)

Happening here, too.  Videos either think there is no Flash or cause Firefox to coredump.  Run Firefox from the command line and see if it shows this:

```
% firefox
(process:77232): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
        Using the fallback 'C' locale.
Assertion failed: (wrote >= 0 && wrote == got), function cubeb_refill_stream, file /usr/ports/www/firefox/work/mozilla-release/media/libcubeb/src/cubeb_alsa.c, line 314.
Abort (core dumped)
```


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## zspider (Mar 22, 2013)

Try enabling the HTML5 trial on Youtube, if your browser supports it, it should work for some videos, the ones that don't appear to work will, if you use the embedded link.


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## YuryG (Mar 26, 2013)

*The same*

The same here. YouTube became useless in latest Firefox last days. It either hangs in the video area, or tells me to upgrade Flash (it is in the latest Linux distro). In Epiphany YouTube still works. HTML5 is still too buggy, and not available for all videos. Also severe audio-video de-sync (or lagging in reaction) occurs when it is possible to start video in YouTube in Firefox.

FreeBSD-9.1.


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## wblock@ (Mar 26, 2013)

Please enter a PR.


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## cpm@ (Mar 26, 2013)

Have you tried this hint? 
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2013-March/082262.html.


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## jrm@ (Mar 26, 2013)

I'm also having this problem (certain videos say I don't have the flash plugin installed).  Setting dom.ipc.plugins.enabled to false in about:config seems to be working, but I can not say for sure since the problem only happened with certain videos (which I can't specifically recall).

I only have the build options GSTREAMER, LOGGING, OPTIMIZE_CFLAGS and OSS selected.


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## cpm@ (Mar 26, 2013)

When Firefox terminates a plugin that is no longer responding, you will see the "plugin has crashed" error dialog. To prevent Firefox from terminating plugins it considers non-responsive, must set dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs to -1 in about:config.


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## wblock@ (Mar 26, 2013)

Mine didn't say anything about a plugin crashing, it just coredumped.

To be more specific about these workarounds: enter about:config as a URL, right-click, select New, Boolean, enter media.use_cubeb, and set it to false.  dom.ipc.plugins.enabled already exists, just set it to false.  After that, close and restart Firefox.

Followup: some non-Youtube videos will not play if the second one is set to false.  But if it is set to true, some Youtube videos claim Flash is not installed.


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## YuryG (Mar 27, 2013)

dom.ipc.plugins.enabled to false works for me, thanks! Some videos I couldn't watch on youtube (all) yesterday I can now.


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## neelwebs (Mar 28, 2013)

YuryG said:
			
		

> dom.ipc.plugins.enabled to false works for me, thanks! Some videos I couldn't watch on youtube (all) yesterday I can now.



Thanks! Now I can watch YouTube videos in Firefox!


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## KNOStic (Mar 31, 2013)

Definitely something going on there - I don't get the crashes, but more often than not I get the "You need to install flash player" on an animated GIF background of analog TV snow. Latest flash version, works just dandy everywhere else. Tricks listed above make no difference.

Does the same thing when enabling HTML5, and when you click on the animated GIF which replaces the flash data, it's definitely showing that it's trying to push HTTP HTML5 video down and has cancelled the flash load just as it would normally start. Seems to me as though they're screwing with Firefox, Epiphany and Chromium work just fine.


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## Understudy (Apr 5, 2013)

KNOStic said:
			
		

> Definitely something going on there - I don't get the crashes, but more often than not I get the "You need to install flash player" on an animated GIF background of analog TV snow. Latest flash version, works just dandy everywhere else. Tricks listed above make no difference.
> 
> Does the same thing when enabling HTML5, and when you click on the animated GIF which replaces the flash data, it's definitely showing that it's trying to push HTTP HTML5 video down and has cancelled the flash load just as it would normally start. Seems to me as though they're screwing with Firefox, Epiphany and Chromium work just fine.




I have the same situation as you. I just get the message "You need to install flash player." I am running v 20 on Firefox and 9.1 on freebsd FreeBSD. 

Sincerely,
Brendhan


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## wblock@ (Apr 5, 2013)

With Firefox 20, media.use_cubeb true, and dom.ipc.plugins.enabled left at the default (true), no problems with any video tried so far.


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## YuryG (Apr 6, 2013)

No, for me YouTube videos still could only be played with dom.ipc.plugins.enabled to false in latest Firefox 20; the same as earlier, in 19th version of Firefox. (By the way, I didn't use media.use_cubeb either time.)


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## AngryWolf (Apr 6, 2013)

jrm said:
			
		

> I'm also having this problem (certain videos say I don't have the flash plugin installed).  Setting dom.ipc.plugins.enabled to false in about:config seems to be working, but I can not say for sure since the problem only happened with certain videos (which I can't specifically recall).



Hope this helps identifying those videos:

In my experience, without the mentioned workaround, videos that are only available in 240p resolution could be played without any problems, the rest (ie. ones also available in HD resolutions did not work for me.


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## vortex (Apr 7, 2013)

wblock@ said:
			
		

> Mine didn't say anything about a plugin crashing, it just coredumped.
> 
> To be more specific about these workarounds: enter about:config as a URL, right-click, select New, Boolean, enter media.use_cubeb, and set it to false.  dom.ipc.plugins.enabled already exists, just set it to false.  After that, close and restart Firefox.
> 
> Followup: some non-Youtube videos will not play if the second one is set to false.  But if it is set to true, some Youtube videos claim Flash is not installed.



*T*his works for me.
*T*hanks!


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## zubair (Apr 7, 2013)

*Just disable the adblock addon and it should probably work*

Just disable the Adblock add-on and it should probably work. It worked for me that way.


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## neelwebs (Apr 8, 2013)

zubair said:
			
		

> Just disable the Adblock add-on and it should probably work. It worked for me that way.



I did not have Adblock on my Firefox. And anyways I'm now using Opera (got a little too used to it).


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## baos (Apr 11, 2013)

Fix worked for me, thanks for posting it!


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## poisonlux (Apr 12, 2013)

I got this:

media.use_cubeb â†’ true
dom.ipc.plugins.enabled â†’ false

And it's working o.o


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## macondo (Apr 29, 2013)

Hi all, do these tips apply to FreeBSD 8.3? *T*hank you.


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## ankscorek (May 10, 2013)

Hey friends,



> To be more specific about these workarounds: enter about:config as a URL, right-click, select New, Boolean, enter media.use_cubeb, and set it to false. dom.ipc.plugins.enabled already exists, just set it to false. After that, close and restart Firefox.



This work around was working for quite some time, but now this one has stopped responding. I tried other combinations as given in this thread but again the video part is not working.

Any suggestions please.


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## wblock@ (May 10, 2013)

dom.ipc.plugins.enabled is the touchy one.  As reported, some videos only work with it set to true, some only work with it set to false.


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## chessmaster (Sep 21, 2013)

wblock@ said:
			
		

> Mine didn't say anything about a plugin crashing, it just coredumped.
> 
> To be more specific about these workarounds: enter about:config as a URL, right-click, select New, Boolean, enter media.use_cubeb, and set it to false.  dom.ipc.plugins.enabled already exists, just set it to false.  After that, close and restart Firefox.
> 
> Followup: some non-Youtube videos will not play if the second one is set to false.  But if it is set to true, some Youtube videos claim Flash is not installed.



Thanks! That solved my problem.


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## tzoi516 (Sep 21, 2013)

It's working for me; I'm using FreeBSD 9.2-RC4.


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## kAldown (Nov 3, 2013)

So if I want to play video on youtube, that not works, I should kill Firefox, and start again, so video working in 70% chances, you giving advice to set dom.ipc.plugin.enable to false, so some videos should work, but some doesn't, so what is the point?
Any solution to configure FF 25.01 to work well without restarting each time asking me to install a plugin that is already installed?
Thanks.


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## laufdi (Nov 21, 2013)

Did not work for me. Firefox hangs completely (not crashing) as soon as I start a YouTube video. The cure for me was:


```
# mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin
# ln -s  /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins/linux-f10-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/
```


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 22, 2013)

@laufdi, you should not have to do that anymore. I didn't read through this thread but I had an issue with Flash on Chrome recently. Reinstalling nspluginwrapper fixed it, though reinstalling linux-f10-flashplugin11 first may have helped (I don't think so).


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## Martillo1 (Nov 23, 2013)

Use multimedia/smplayer and its companion multimedia/smtube.


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## scottro (Mar 22, 2015)

Playing with 11.0-CURRENT mainly because of protocelt's mention of the improvements they saw) and ran into the same problem with Flash on YouTube.  Using the dom.ipc.plugins.enable to false still fixes it.


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## drhowarddrfine (Mar 22, 2015)

YouTube no longer serves Flash and defaults to HTML5 video.


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## protocelt (Mar 22, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> YouTube no longer serves Flash and defaults to HTML5 video.


And it's about time they lay that vulnerability sponge to rest. It's banned on all my systems.


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## scottro (Mar 22, 2015)

Ah, then HTML5 issues were fixed with that dom.ipc option.  I thought that there was still a lot of Flash on it.  I could swear that at least sometimes, as I have autoplay turned off, that it will ask if I want to allow the Flash plugin.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jun 12, 2016)

The problem still exists on some installations. Youtube videos will only play once or Firefox just hangs. There is no longer any dom.ipc.plugins.enabled in about:config.


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## cpm@ (Jun 13, 2016)

It's worth reading this entry: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2013/09/24/plugin-activation-in-firefox/

and here is the add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/click-to-play-per-element/


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## cpm@ (Jul 21, 2016)

I found it interesting and want to share it:

https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/07/20/reducing-adobe-flash-usage-in-firefox/


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## ankscorek (Jul 25, 2016)

Hi friends it has started again. Video on youtube on firefox is not working, however it is working on `Arora`


```
$ uname -a
FreeBSD noname.noname.edu 10.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE #0 r274401: Tue Nov 11 22:51:51 UTC 2014     root@releng1.nyi.freebsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386

$ firefox -v
Mozilla Firefox 47.0.1
```

The error on the youtube page is


```
If playback doesn't begin shortly try restarting your device
```

`about:plugins`


```
OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems, Inc.
File:
Path:
Version: null
State: Enabled
This plugin is automatically installed by Mozilla to comply with the WebRTC specification and to enable WebRTC calls with devices that require the H.264 video codec. Visit http://www.openh264.org/ to view the codec source code and learn more about the implementation.
```


```
OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems, Inc. will be installed shortly
```

Any suggestions please


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## Deleted member 48958 (Jul 25, 2016)

Try emulators/pipelight  -- https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/56506/#post-321811
With pipelight you can use latest windows flash plugin via emulators/wine.


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## sidetone (Jul 25, 2016)

Youtube brought back Flash didn't they?


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## Deleted member 48958 (Jul 25, 2016)

Youtube videos work for me on FF in HTML5 very fine, without any issues,
To set HTML5 player as a default on Youtube, visit this page https://www.youtube.com/html5 .


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## zspider (Jul 25, 2016)

I haven't had any issues with Youtube and Firefox in a long time. Alot of videos run in HTML5 without any effort on my part.


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## YuryG (Jul 25, 2016)

No trouble here too. FreeBSD 10.3-STABLE amd64 with firefox-47.0.1_2,1. Either in HTML5 version or with Flash version via Linux Flash (with YouTube Flash video plugin).


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jul 26, 2016)

Working not too badly here on 10.1 but there are indeed quite a few sites still using flash on some videos, especially large sites. I guess they didn't get the memo.


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## ankscorek (Jul 31, 2016)

ILUXA said:


> Try emulators/pipelight -- https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/56506/#post-321811
> With pipelight you can use latest windows flash plugin via emulators/wine.



Deinstalled linux-fc6 plugin and installed pipelight by following the thread. Results are same, youtube still not working on Firefox, though, working on Arora


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## Deleted member 48958 (Jul 31, 2016)

Maybe we are talking about different "youtube"s 
Youtube work fine for me on Firefox 47 and Seamonkey with HTML5 or Flash player (with pipelight) (FreeBSD 10.3 amd64).
Maybe it's one of your FF extensions blocking it, try to remove/rename your profile ~/.mozilla/firefox and restart firefox.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jul 31, 2016)

Could also be something in about:config. It's easy to forget what one has done in there over the months.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 31, 2016)

As I stated three years ago, and last year, YouTube videos work just fine for me in Firefox. Firefox, for those who don't know, is dropping all support for Flash this year but YouTube defaults to HTML5 video.


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## Yampress (Aug 13, 2016)

Firefox actually works with HTML5 on FreeBSD and Linux too. And now there isn't problem with Youtube.
 You can open Youtube stream in VLC too.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 6, 2017)

SmarterWasabi Your list is pretty lame and point 4 does not apply to Firefox, or any browser, as they all support HTML5. As this is your very first post, it's years old, and it points to a certain web site on this specific subject, I question your intentions.


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## Spartrekus (Jul 7, 2017)

Fire up Firefox !! 

You can avoid all the mess and vast memory usage. 

wget the zip file and gunzip the file. https://github.com/spartrekus/youtube-dl-fork
Once done, you can then run into your terminal: 

python youtube-dl-fk "whatever tube page".

Once done, you can use mplayer, which will take much less memory usage. However, it is not according youtube and you take yourself infringment to youtube.


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## tobik@ (Jul 7, 2017)

Why would I use this instead of www/youtube_dl?


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## Spartrekus (Jul 7, 2017)

tobik@ said:


> Why would I use this instead of www/youtube_dl?


 
It is just the same. The official www/youtube_dl is highly recommended.


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