Less data being used means that you are able to use more data for other reasons on your iPhone or another smartphone.įor a few years, the ability to watch 4K YouTube videos on Safari went uninterrupted for many. Another benefit of using VP9 is that since it doesn’t use as much data to compress and decode the videos, this means that less data is being used. The primary benefit of using VP9 over one of the older standards has everything to do with providing smooth playback for those with limited bandwidth. With the new codec, you would be able to watch HD and 4K content at “half the bandwidth used by other known codecs”. This new codec, named VP9, provided an all-new way for videos to be compressed. Why can’t I watch YouTube in 4K?Īs we’ve stated, Google introduced a new open-source codec for YouTube all the way back in 2015. If not, then that means there are a few extra steps that you have to take. If you are already capable of watching YouTube in 4K, then you will see an option for 2160p. Scroll up and look for the highest-quality video resolution.There is a “4K” tag available next compatible videos.Find a video with 4K content available.
That could be in part due to the monitor being used with your Mac, but it’s easy to check for compatibility. You may not have ever noticed that you were unable to view content in 4K. With iOS 14 and tvOS 14, all that has changed, bringing compatibility to the most popular Apple devices. Surprisingly, support for VP9 had been missing on the iPhone and Apple TV. Throughout the beta process, Apple began testing support for the V9 codec that had been missing since it was introduced. Since then, those wanting to watch that crispy 4K footage on YouTube were simply out of luck. Instead, you were forced to switch over to Chrome or something like Firefox or even (more recently) the Chromium version of Microsoft Edge. Nevertheless, the change left Safari users wondering why they couldn’t view content in 4K any longer. In a blog post from 2015, the YouTube Engineering team shared why the change to the new VP9 open-source codec was taking place.
It seems that Google switched its encoding process, which actually began all the way back in 2013. It all started 5+ years ago VP9 vs H264 Codecs