How to get around YouTube’s coronavirus video quality settings

By MixDex Article may include affiliate links

With YouTube announcing it’s defaulting videos to standard definition to help ease the strain on its network resources during the coronavirus outbreak, how can you still watch videos in HD?

Well, straight from the source, here’s how:

There are a few things to be aware of, however.

While most videos uploaded over the past few years should be in high definition, it can vary. Older videos may not be available in HD at all.

Some videos may be also only be available in the slightly lesser quality, but still technically HD, 760p resolution, as opposed to the higher 1080p  and other resolutions.

In addition, videos produced in the 4K quality 2160p or 3840p will still be available, but viewers need to switch to HD or 4K versions, where available, each time they watch a video.

The YouTube menu, as illustrated in the instructional video above, should show all available resolutions.

Finally, your internet connection status at any given moment may not be adequate to support higher quality streaming well — while you’ll typically be able to still watch videos at higher quality, the clips may “pause” periodically while the data is transferred in the background.

Also note that, due to increased usage of the internet in general, you may find performance issues vary from time of day or if other people in your home or office is using the internet, especially if more than one person is streaming video at once.