[zimpenfish]

As a counter-anecdote, I use YouTube daily in Safari and it will not infrequently hang for tens of seconds when trying to load a video, occasionally play the sound without the video, reasonably frequently put the video over most of the page with no way to get to the controls, etc.

(This may be because I have a whole swathe of adblockers, etc., plus I do a lot of `yt-dlp`ing from the same IP which may have me on a naughty list.)

[sebra]

I have the same issue. I think it's because I'm adblocking because if I try in chrome with no adblocker it loads the ads instantly.

But eh either 5s of black screen or 60s of ads. I tried watching a 15 min yt video without adblock and it had 5 ad breaks with some unskippable ads.

[zimpenfish]

> I tried watching a 15 min yt video without adblock and it had 5 ad breaks with some unskippable ads.

Yeah - I watch most of my YouTubes on the Apple TV and the ads are a pestilence. Sometimes it'll be 50s pre-roll[1] with multiple 30-50s breaks for a 10m videos.

Luckily there exist[0] many fine technologies that let you view them without ads via something like Infuse with a DLNA server if you're that way inclined.

[0] Currently. YT-DLP is fighting the good fight but I don't know how much longer they'll be able to keep in front. But then I'll just stop watching YouTube, really, because it's a horror show without adblock/circumventions.

[1] The video doesn't appear in your history until the pre-roll has finished which means if you can't be arsed sitting through a 50s pre-roll just that second and - at least on the Apple TV - you've not clicked on the video from your homepage / subscriptions, good luck trying to find it again unless you remember the name + channel etc. (which it also won't properly show you until after the pre-roll!)[2]

[2] I hate YouTube corporate.