YouTube is packed with all kinds of user-made videos, ranging from how-tos to pure entertainment. Depending on what you’re watching, you might want to speed things up or slow them down. Normally, that’s easy thanks to playback speed controls. But right now, a bug on the Android app has broken that feature, leaving users stuck at regular speed.
A bunch of users on Reddit have pointed out that playback speed controls on the YouTube Android app are busted. When they tap other speed options, nothing sticks. The folks over at 9to5Google are seeing the same thing: even though the app lets you pick different speeds, it just resets to 1x when you exit the controls and come back to the video you’re watching. Interestingly, the web version works just fine.
The outlet has spotted the bug on both the stable (20.28.39) and beta (20.29.39) versions of the YouTube Android app, and yes, it’s happening on my end too. Tapping on any speed option, like 0.25x, 1.25x, or 2x doesn’t actually change anything. Oddly enough, the same glitch showed up late last year too.
YouTube confirms the issue, and a fix is in the works
In a post on the YouTube Help community, a company representative said the platform is aware of the playback speed bug on Android and is looking into it: “We’re aware some of you are experiencing issues adjusting playback speed while watching videos on Android devices. Our teams are actively investigating this issue! We’ll update this thread as soon as we have new information.”
One Reddit user suggested a quick fix, which involves restarting the app, and seems to work for the first couple of videos. But they noted it’s been getting less reliable as the day goes on.
In the meantime, the only workaround is pressing and holding on the video to double the speed, but it resets the moment you let go, so it’s not exactly convenient.
