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Important message about the app (Patreon)

Published:
2024-09-12 08:10:48
Imported:
2026-06

Content

There's a possibility of getting a temporal "Video unavailable" error on any videos inside any clients (including official ones). In my case, the error lasted a couple of hours. Some users reported receiving this error during 2 days. This could be related to our app, other non-official clients, or adblocking scripts. We're investigating the issue.

Comments

Whizzzkid

I've seen this, a couple of times a message shows up "applying 404 fix..." It goes into a loop and nothing happens. Restarting the video fixes it sometimes. Also, the playback queue has been finicky, it not always goes to the next video.

tsler

Is this the same issue that causes things such as history or subscriptions tab to not load any videos into the feed? It doesnt seem to have any real reason behind it and it's intermittent. The home feed seems to be fine always and videos load from that without issue.

Tom Hoots

I'm up at 2:00 AM, after waking up in the middle of the night, and getting an email notification about this post. BOY, AM I HAVING THIS PROBLEM, MASSIVELY. Please allow me go into detail. This started on August 27, at around 2:45 PM in US Pacific Daylight time. I was actually watching a video on SmartTube (on NVIDIA Shield 2015), and decided to open it in YouTube on my computer (running Firefox), to check out the comments. And I got the "Video unavailable" error -- while the video continued to play on SmartTube. When I tried to move on to another video on SmartTube, then it started giving me the "Video unavailable" error. I started rebooting everything, and eventually -- about 2 hours later -- rebooted my NVIDIA Shield. Upon launching SmartTube after rebooting, I saw the "Update" notification that installed 23.30 Stable, and SmartTube has been working, ever since. Though, yes, I have noticed that it doesn't "update the YouTube History," like it did before. However, since that date and time, I have been unable to watch a YouTube video within ANY web browser -- IF I am logged into my account. "Fixing" the problem is easy -- I just have to log out of my account, and videos will play just fine. So, this is an ACCOUNT problem, and NOTHING to do my web browser, my network, or anything else. Again, "all I have to do is log out of my account," and videos will play. I have even tried a notebook computer that I wiped clean and reinstalled Windows 11 on about a year ago, then "put it away" and left it untouched. I pulled that out, to find that I hadn't installed Firefox on it at all. So, I installed that, and got the same account problem. Nothing in the cache, no extensions installed -- just "Video unavailable" if I'm logged into my account. I also tried Microsoft Edge for nearly the first time in my life, and got the same experience. On Android devices, the official YouTube app would produce the "Video unavailable" error on the first video I tried to play, then subsequent videos during that session will play. Since then, even the first video in a session will play without the error. All while logged into my account. But if I try to run YouTube within ANY web browser, I get the same account problem. I've tried the Kiwi Browser, the Samsung browser, and the Chrome browser. This seems to be the most populated report in the YouTube user community help pages: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/294302773 76 people, including myself, have clicked the "I have the same question" button. It lists other references to the issue, including this Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/1f44qw5/day_three_of_video_unavailable_this_content_isnt/ Down at the bottom, a reply shows two links to code, showing this: requestStorageAccessFor: Permission denied. I have seen references to SmartTube in a handful of messaging about the "Video unavailable" issue, and talk about perhaps YouTube has been seeing some ads "getting blocked before they launch by some third-party app" or something like that. But I would be one who wouldn't DARE mention "SmartTube" in a public forum. The original poster of the support.google thread has added something about reloading the page and it might work, but I have tried that with absolutely no success. The message is otherwise "soft locked" so nobody else can post to it. Perhaps the most ominous thing I have seen is how people have set up new accounts, and within a few days, even THOSE accounts suffer the "Video unavailable" problem. Personally, I "cut the cord" a few years ago, and after using a few different streaming services, I found that what I truly preferred to do was to "watch YouTube videos" on my TV sets -- and I had installed SmartTube some years before that. I appreciate VERY MUCH all of the improvements to the experience of watching YouTube videos that SmartTube has made -- it's like the "repeat" and other options absolutely ALLOW US TO ESCAPE FROM THE YOUTUBE ALGORITHM, and truly control what we will see "next." As just one example. I have used YouTube on my computer more to "send stuff to SmartTube," rather multitasking so I can quickly access videos on SmartTube, rather than wading around through millions of videos -- so, "as log as SmartTube works," I'm good. The "Video unavailable" issue is an inconvenience, but I can easily use the "Watch Later" playlist to accomplish what I have been doing. So, "Thank God for SmartTube! Your work is very much appreciated. But in the end, I definitely have the impression that some accounts have been "marked" or "blacklisted" or whatever -- and perhaps something about "third-party ad blocking" may have something to do with this. Comically, it has never occurred to me to "turn off ad blocking" in SmartTube, though I did at least try to launch YouTube on my computer while I wasn't running SmartTube, and that certainly didn't help anything. Finally, to put it into perspective, "watching YouTube videos on my TV sets" is at least 90% of my TV watching. I'm retired, and I keep my TV on at night while I sleep -- and it's common that I won't even leave the house for several days per a given week -- I'm literally running SmartTube 24 hours per day, and perhaps 18 hours per day when I do leave the house. So, I may be using SmartTube a bit more than the average user. I do usually reboot my NVIDIA Shield "morning and night" if not more often, and turn it off when I leave the house, for a bit more perspective. I hope this detailed information might be helpful in your efforts to deal with this issue -- I certainly expect that other SmartTube users have been having the same problem I have. Again, thank you very much for all that you do. Suffice it to say that "I have tried the official YouTube Android TV app," and it's absolutely HORRIFYING!

SmartTube
>>149217198

Thanks for the datailed feedback. In my case, only the mobile client is working as before.

Chris Harwood

Thanks for the info and all your work as usual!

Tom Hoots

Update -- actually from this page again: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/294302773 As of September 21, it appears that mobile apps won't work anymore -- "This content isn't available." I have confirmed that with my own mobile devices. So, this gets a bit scarier. I'm aware that the new update moves the YouTube "History" to being "stored locally" in the SmartTube updates -- and I'm wondering if other YouTube features associated with YouTube accounts might need to start heading in that direction. "Can we save our subscriptions locally in SmartTube?" "Can we import playlists (i.e. "Watch Later") and store them locally?" And so on. Personally, I have been building a document to save all of my subscriptions in an HTML page (or a few of them) -- is there some way to pull that up and use it as my own "home page" or whatever? That kind of thing. In the end, for now, the only way to make use of my account's settings is to use SmartTube to watch YouTube videos with -- which is perfectly fine with me. Thanks as always for the work you've been doing!

SmartTube
>>150288858

Thanks for the update. I'm working right now on locally stored subscriptions (PocketTube like).

Tom Hoots
>>150288858

Thanks again for all of your efforts. Indeed, I think locally stored subscriptions would be very important in this stage of "relations with YouTube."

Tom Hoots

Back to this situation -- apparently "something got fixed." Videos are now "available" to me when logged into my YouTube account, in a web browser (Firefox) on my computer.

Tom Hoots

Another update: "That didn't last very long." Today it's back to "Video unavailable." Both in a web browser and on the mobile app.