A full list of bandwidth monitoring tools shows that while YouTube satisfies your viewing pleasure, its share in data consumption is quite high. So if you want to minimize Use of YouTube data without compromising your entertainment needs, follow our advice!
Reduce the use of YouTube data on a PC
You can reduce the use of YouTube data by following these tips:
- Decrease video quality
- Disable autoplay
- Use Bandwidth Saver for YouTube extension
- Preventive download of your videos
The results reveal that even if a user watches three minutes of a five-minute video in 144p, YouTube buffers almost the entire video.
1) Lower video quality
HD video streaming consumes about 3 GB of data per hour. YouTube offers a wide range of video streaming quality (up to 1080p). As such, the higher the quality of the streaming, the more likely YouTube is to consume data. So, the most important advice is to avoid watching HD videos when using data. Here's how!
Open YouTube in your browser and play a video.
Scroll down to locate the gear icon and once found click on it. As you can see from the image above, the video is played in HD quality where the data consumption rate is quite high.
To change this, select ‘Quality".
Then, in the list of options displayed, choose to play the video in lower quality (preferably 360 pixels to avoid poor video quality)
2) Disable automatic playback
It can be difficult to automatically control the use of data with video announcements and video playback. So turning off the autoplay feature turns out to be the most viable option.
Tap the gear icon located in the lower right corner of the YouTube video player to display the options.
Make sure theAutoplay'In the list is not checked. If not, just move the slider to disable the function.
You can also deactivate the function via ‘nextFrom the YouTube video page, just uncheck the option to turn it off.
3) Bandwidth saver for YouTube extension
Use Bandwidth Saver for YouTube browser extension for Google Chrome. This is a simple extension that will automatically set the YouTube video quality to the lowest available for each video in order to save bandwidth on slow connections and / or for users with small data limits.
4) Download your videos as a preventive measure
It is true that most video streaming apps do not allow you to download videos, but some apps can be used as a workaround. So use apps that allow you to download videos. This method also offers laptop users a great option for taking advantage of Wi-Fi at work, school, or in public hotspots to record videos for later viewing.
Lily: Best YouTube apps for Windows 10.
If you know more about these tips, share them with us.