If you are using YouTube on Microsoft Edge but are having serious issues with stuttering and general performance, this article will guide you through several different troubleshooting steps you can take to solve the problem. This issue is especially bad when viewing content at 1.5 or 2x speed. But thankfully, the issue is easily fixed with a quick "Optional Feature" toggle.
Takeaways:
- Why does YouTube run so badly on Microsoft Edge?
- How do you fix stuttering in Microsoft Edge?
- What is QUIC and why does it cause so many issues with YouTube playback
Table of Contents
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How to Fix YouTube Stuttering on Microsoft Edge
To fix YouTube playback in Microsoft Edge you will need to make the following changes.
- Open Edge and type edge://flags/ into the address bar.
- Search for “QUIC” in the experimental features page.
- Locate the “Experimental QUIC protocol” option and set it to Disabled.
- Restart Microsoft Edge and try playing a YouTube video.
For many users, including myself, disabling QUIC resolved the stuttering issue. While it might not work for everyone, it’s worth giving a shot.
What Is QUIC? And Why does it make YouTube playback so bad?
QUIC is an internet protocol designed to enhance web application speed and performance. It’s especially geared toward improving video streaming, so it’s ironic that enabling QUIC sometimes seems to have the opposite effect on YouTube—despite both being Google innovations.
Chromium-based browsers like Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome have QUIC enabled by default. While this usually improves performance, some configurations or network conditions may cause playback issues, as seems to be the case with YouTube. While not quite the same Hardware Acceleration can also cause some issues like this from time to time.
Why Does QUIC Affect YouTube?
The exact reason why QUIC impacts YouTube stuttering isn’t clear as QUIC was specifically designed to enhance video streaming by ensuring fast and stable connections. As Microsoft’s James Kehr explained in a technical post, the goal of QUIC was to create a seamless internet experience, where video streams start instantly in high quality without buffering or pixelation. As this software comes directly from Microsoft it's not all that surprising there are problems like this. Microsoft is pretty hit-and-miss with their rollout and claims about features.
Should I Enable or Disable Super Resolution in Microsoft Edge?
While slightly off-topic you may also want to check Super Resolution settings in Microsoft Edge. This feature enables AI upscaling for video content and could be another thing causing playback issues on YouTube. Though it generally only kicks in for videos in 720p or lower. That said it's still worth checking anyway. You can find more info on that process right here.
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