Google Drive videos are not playing or showing a blank screen

Google Drive videos are not playing or showing a blank screen

If you’ve uploaded a video to Google Drive but it isn’t playing on your computer, here’s what you can do. These solutions are intended for those who use a browser to access Google Drive, instead of the desktop application. You can apply these troubleshooting suggestions to any browser you use on your PC.

Google Drive is a great cloud storage solution, which allows you to download almost all files, including videos. If you buy the Google One subscription, you can download great videos, save them and share them with others without any problem. However, sometimes your downloaded videos may not be played properly.

Google Drive videos are not played

To fix Google Drive videos are not played problem, follow these suggestions-

  1. Is the video not ready to play?
  2. Check the video format
  3. Check the video resolution
  4. Check file size
  5. Do not block third-party cookies
  6. Sign out of secondary Google account
  7. Problem with pirated content.

1]Video is not ready to play

If you’ve uploaded a video to Google Drive and tried to play it immediately, but it hasn’t been played in your browser, you may need to wait a few minutes. Although Google Drive will display the video thumbnail almost immediately, users may need to wait a few minutes before they can play and watch it like any other ordinary video. There is no specific wait time, but it depends on the size of your video. The larger the file, the longer you have to wait. In this case, you might receive a message like – “We are processing this video. Please check later. ” or This video is currently unavailable.

2]Check the video format

Although you can upload any video (with any extension) to Google Drive using certain techniques, you cannot play them all in your browser. This happens due to the restriction. For your information, these are the supported video formats that you can watch in Google Drive – WebM, MPEG4, 3GPP, MOV, MPEG-PS, AVI, WMV, FLV, MTS and OGG.

In addition, Google Drive does not guarantee whether your mobile can read all these formats or not. If you use a Windows PC with any standard browser like Google Drive, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, etc., you can read them all.

3]Check the video resolution

In addition to having a restriction on the video format, Google Drive prevents users from playing videos with a resolution higher than 1080p. That means you can download and store 4K or 8K video on Google Drive, but you can’t play it. Your video must have a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels or less.

4]Check file size

The third limitation of Google Drive is related to the file size. Although Google Drive only offers 15 GB of free storage, users can extend it with the Google One subscription. Even if you buy terabytes of storage, your video should be 5 TB or less. This is a rare case when you have a video file larger than 5 TB, but it is always a good idea to check the size.

5]Do not block third-party cookies

Blocking third-party cookies can cause this problem. In this case, you should check whether your third party cookie setting is set to none or not. Otherwise, you must restore the default setting. Different browsers have different ways of doing it. If you use Google Chrome, enter it in your address bar and press the Enter button-

chrome://settings/content/cookies

Now make sure that Block third-party cookies the option is disabled.

If you are using the latest version of Mozilla Firefox, you must use the Standard tracking protection. However, you can also define custom rules. To do this, choose Customs, remove the tick from Cookies checkbox, reload the Google Drive window and try to read it.

Likewise, you can also remove the third party cookie prevention system from other browsers.

6]Sign out of secondary Google account

If you use multiple Google accounts in your browser, it is suggested that you sign out of the secondary Google account. Although Google takes care of these things in a sophisticated way, certain internal parameters can cause conflicts.

seven]Pirated content issue

Google uses hash matching to detect pirated content, which you can’t download and share via Google Drive. If you’ve downloaded a pirated video, now’s the time to get rid of it because you can’t play it in any way.

Other solutions:

There are two other things you should check and modify.

  • Browser extension
  • Internet connection

To play a video in your browser, you must have a good Internet connection. Otherwise, he will not play for obvious reasons. Second, you can turn off all browser extensions to check if they are causing the problem or not.

If nothing works and you need to watch the video immediately, you can use the manual method to get the job done. This means that you can download the video to your computer and watch it.

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