4 Hacks to Make Videos Load Faster on Your Phone
Life is too short to wait for your videos to buffer. We’ve got places to go and funny YouTube videos to show off. If your phone is driving you crazy by making you wait to watch, we’re ready to help. No matter if you watch downloaded videos offline or are just trying to stream, here are a few ways you can work around your slowpoke videos.
1. Make sure that you’re streaming the correct quality. The easiest way to stop a video from pausing to buffer is by watching it at a lower quality. If it feels like you can’t get through five seconds of your video without it stopping, just change the quality you’re watching to the lowest possible. You can find quality under the little “settings” gear in a video’s bottom right corner.
2. Use video boost. Download the app Opera Mini. It’s a web browser for your phone (or iPad) that comes with the ability to use “video boost.” This feature allows you to compress the video’s data, which will make sure your phone loads it faster.
3. Use a third party. If you’re partial to downloading videos from the internet and then watching them offline later, you can still run into some weird problems. You may need a converter like HandBrake and then a separate media player like VLC or PlayerXTreme. For more information on how to decode downloaded videos, check out this handy guide.
4. Focus your device on the video. If your phone is simultaneously streaming, checking the weather, looking for new messages and a thousand other things, the rate at which your video loads is going to be significantly slower. Keep your device focused on your video by making sure that no other apps are running in the background.
What other tech tricks do you want to learn? Let us know @BritandCo!
(Photo via Getty)