Watching YouTube videos online is one of those things that almost any internet user does. … Watching videos in 360p for an hour will use only 60 megabytes of data. But watching videos in 4k for an hour might use 2.7GB of data on your plan or more if you’re watching on a higher frame rate.
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Yep, that’s true. It’s no coincidence that Youtube is considered one of bandwidth hogging apps. In fact, streaming videos on YouTube at full HD quality consumes up to 1.65 GB per hour. So, what should we do to save data while watching videos on YouTube? Right below here are a few simple and easy ways for you to do that.
Lower the video quality
There is an important fact that you should know: streaming videos with higher quality always consumes more data. That means lowering the quality of the videos you stream on YouTube is the most effective way to save your data and bandwidth.
YouTube provides users with different video quality options that range from 144p to up to 2160p (4K). Normally, it’s good to choose the video quality options of 480p or even just 360p as they help save data usage without affecting much your streaming experience.
How to lower the video quality???
- To lower video quality on mobile devices: open the video you want to watch ⇨ tap on the three-dot menu on the top right corner of your playback window ⇨ Choose Quality ⇨ Select the resolution you want.
- To lower video quality on PC: Click on the Gear icon in the playback window ⇨ Click on Quality ⇨ Choose the resolution you want.
After lowering to ideal video quality, YouTube is no longer one of bandwidth hogging apps on your devices.
Turn off the autoplay feature
By default, YouTube will automatically play another video when you’re done with the current one. Well, if that “another” video is not what you want to watch, then you know that your data is wasted, right? So, turning the autoplay off is also a good way to save your data usage while streaming videos on YouTube.
To turn autoplay off on PC, look for the toggle button next to the “Gear” icon in the playback window. Just need to flick that button, then you can turn off the autoplay feature.
To turn autoplay off on mobile devices, you open the YouTube app ⇒ tap your profile picture ⇒ tap on Settings ⇒ select the AutoPlay section and then Uncheck the “Autoplay next video” option.
Download videos for offline viewing
The YouTube mobile app allows the users in selected regions to download videos for offline watching. You are in luck if you are in the location where this feature is supported. This is because you can save videos you want to watch when your device is on a WiFi connection. Of course, you can save a significant amount of data using this offline viewing feature. This way, your YouTube is not one of bandwidth hogging apps anymore right.
Roundup
Recently, we have explored easy ways to save data while watching videos on YouTube. As you can see, all of them are so easy and simple to follow, right? Besides these, there are other ways that can also allow us to reduce data usage while enjoying YouTube content such as using YouTube Go (the lighter version of the regular YouTube mobile app), limiting data usage on the device, and more. If you can save data and bandwidth usage while using YouTube, it’s no longer one of bandwidth hogging apps on your devices.
Sourece: https://gospeedcheck.com/article/bandwidth-hogging-208
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