A video is not loading or working
A video can not load or work properly for a variety of reasons. This guide will help you troubleshoot problems with videos.
YouTube Videos
Some of our videos are embedded from YouTube. There are important things to know about YouTube videos on our site:
- They cannot be viewed on our site using an iPhone, iPad, or Safari on a Mac. This is due to recent changes in how YouTube verifies embedded videos (combined with Apple's built-in privacy protections for Safari). You will often see an "Error 153" message when you attempt to view a YouTube video with an iPhone, iPad, or Safari. You should be able to view the video on other devices or with a non-Safari browser (e.g., Chrome, Firefox) on your Mac.
- They require that you accept "Marketing" cookies on our site. If you have opted out of these categories of cookies, the video may not load at all. You can check or change your settings for these on our cookie preferences page.
If a video does not load and you see a brief error message with a “Watch video on YouTube” button or link, please follow the troubleshooting steps below or contact us for assistance.
Do not watch the video directly on YouTube. The YouTube version does not include the embedded questions and other interactions required to complete the activity, and we cannot track your progress or record your completion if you watch the video on YouTube.
Other Videos
Our other videos are hosted through Vimeo and are typically more reliable, but they can also get blocked by aggressive ad blockers or browser settings. These videos do require that you accept "Statistics" cookies on our site, however. If you have opted out of these categories of cookies, the video may not load at all. You can check or change your settings for these on our cookie preferences page.
General Troubleshooting Tips
There are other reasons videos might not load, such as corrupted browser cache or browser add-ons or extensions that interfere with our site. Here are some general troubleshooting tips to follow for a video that is not loading correctly:
- Try just refreshing/reloading the current page. Sometimes a video will get stuck during initial page load and a simple refresh will resolve the problem.
- Check your cookies settings on our cookie preferences page. As described above, your video may require that you accept "Marketing" or "Analytics" cookies.
- Try accessing our site using a different browser (e.g., Firefox, Safari, Chrome or any of hundreds of others!) or device. Some videos from YouTube cannot be viewed on an iPhone or iPad or with the Safari browser on a laptop.
- If you prefer to use your current browser, try opening a window or tab in private or incognito mode (see https://www.wikihow.com/Activate-Incognito-Mode for instructions on how to do this) and then accessing the video. Private or incognito mode typically disables most of your browser extensions or add-ons, so if the video loads you'll know it is likely an extension or add-on blocking the video.
- Try clearing your current browser's cache (see https://bit.ly/foxyclearcache for instructions) and reloading the video.
- If you're using a VPN, try disabling the VPN while visiting our site.
There can be other causes for a video not loading, so if none of those solutions work for you, feel free to contact us and we can help troubleshoot the problem!