Recently, my phone entered a state where it would “sort of crash” when I tried to play Youtube links using the internal Youtube app. I could play in Flash fine, but if I opened the same link with the Youtube app, it would:
- vibrate twice
- vibrate again
- open a dialog titled “Cannot play video” with the text “Sorry, this video cannot be played”
Lots of users have seen this, but there weren’t too many solutions. I started out by uninstalling and reinstalling the Youtube app. No luck there. Then I found this AndroidCentral thread and in particular Sumabot’s post.
That set me down the right path. I didn’t want to wipe out as much as he did, but I did do this:
- Open the web browser
- Menu -> More -> Settings
- Clear Cache
- Clear history
- Clear all cookie data
- Clear location access
- Reset to default
I might just have needed to “Reset to default” - if it happens again that’s what I’ll try next.
Update: I’ve figured out that opening a Youtube video in another window (regardless of cache state) will cause the browser to crash. In my case, just clicking on the link (as opposed to long-pressing and saying “Open”) seems to work.