A persistent issue for users has been the “YouTube is not currently available on this device” error message. This can popup at seemingly any time and can be anything from a minor annoyance to a major impediment. We’ve gathered a few fixes for the YouTube not currently available on this device error and info on what might cause it.
How to fix YouTube is not currently available on this device error
To clarify, this error isn’t related to the “This video is unavailable” screen or the message that occurs when a video isn’t available in a user’s country. It also doesn’t mean that YouTube is down. The “YouTube is not currently available on this device” message can pop up at any time and doesn’t seem to have anything to do with what video is currently being played.
The only correlation between the users this issue is affecting seems to be that they’re all watching YouTube on PC (so consoles are safe even though they have their own errors). It can occur on any browser but seems to happen most frequently when someone uses the shuffle feature.
We haven’t quite figured out the mechanics behind why this message occurs, but we have solved what causes it. When the “YouTube is not currently available on this device” error pops up, the browser has actually redirected users to an unlisted video uploaded by TeamYouTube[Help]. The problem is caused when a user tries to load a playlist video URL without a “v” or “index” parameter tries to load.
For example:
- Plays video correctly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<video_id>&list=LL - Redirects to error message:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?=<video_id>&list=LL
More than likely, this unlisted video is an old workaround to automatically display an error message on apps and devices that didn’t support playlists. Since it most often displays on shuffled playlists, a malformed URL from an old video might inadvertently trigger it.
Fortunately, there’s an easy fix for this issue:
- Find the video that attempted to load and check the URL.
- If it isn’t in the format
https://youtube.com/watch?v=<video_id>&list=<list_id>, manually change it to the correct syntax. - Load the video using the corrected URL.
- Unlike then, like it again.
This method should prevent the “YouTube is not currently available on this device” video from loading again. Unfortunately, this fix has to be performed on a video-by-video basis, so don’t get discouraged if the error pops up again.
