Two or three weeks ago, Youtube stopped working for me. I now get a message in the video frame that says: "Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available."

Prior to this, I used to get the same message briefly, but then it would change to the HTML5 icon, and then it would play. But now it just hangs on the error message and nothing happens. I had been using Safari 9.somthing. I have now updated to 10.1, thinking it would fix the problem, but I'm still getting the same message, and the videos still don't play. Any ideas?

BTW, Firefox works just fine on Youtube.

You may have run afoul of a pref setting.

Make sure that the check box at Prefs > Security > Internet plug-ins > Allow Plug-ins is checked.

I think you'll then get a pop-up asking if Flash should be loaded on YouTube, but if not, without closing the YouTube window, click on "Plug-in Settings" in the same pref pane and select youtube.com and "On".

Hope this helps.

I ran into something similar to that last week. YouTube was insisting I install Flash Player to play a particular video. I installed Flash Player but YouTube still refused to recognize Flash Player and run the video. I ended up playing the same YouTube video on my iPad Pro running iOS 10.2 beta and there has never been a Flash Player for iOS.

A couple of days later the same YouTube video played just fine on my Mac — without Flash Player. I concluded there was a glitch in the YouTube JavaScript that detects what players are available on the target computer that YouTube caught and corrected.

That's what I needed to do. Somehow it had been switched off.

It seems to me that something must have changed with Youtube though. Previously, I got the "Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available" message briefly and then it would be replaced by the HTML5 icon and then the video would play. Now, I don't get the HTML5 icon, I get the Flash icon. Maybe Youtube has decided to abandon HTML5?

No matter. It's working now. Thanks.

Happy to hear that you're up and running.

I just looked at a YouTube video, and after the warning flashed on my screen for a fraction of a second I got the HTML5 overlay.

Maybe whether you see the Flash or HTML5 overlay depends on the video, itself. (It doesn't seem at all likely that YouTube has abandoned HTML5.)

You're right, I do get the HTML5 overlay. I was just being impatient and clicked on the video before it showed up.

Further update: A couple of times now, the Flash Player option has turned itself off, and I've had to go back into the plugin settings to turn it back on again. Not a big deal now that I know what I'm looking for, but it's still strange that it's happening.

I've never run into that (in Safari 10.0.1, now)...can't begin to guess what may be happening.

does flash player get turned back off when a flash update is installed? (that would be... frequently...)

Not in my experience.

I've disabled automatic Flash Player updates (because the hourly security updates were wasting too much bandwidth), and I hadn't installed any new updates when this happened. Anyway, I'll keep an eye on it and see if I can figure out what may be causing it.

Hmm, I wonder if Safari is noticing that my version of Flash is out of date and is switching it off.

If you set your Flash pref to notify you to install updates you'll get a pop-up when your version is out of date and you try to play a Flash video.

I doubt that Safari would recognize an out of date version of Flash on its own.

(Hourly security updates?)

Might have been a slight exaggeration.

I used to have the Flash preferences set to notify me when an update was available, but recently I was finding that if I didn't install the update when the notification popped up, then it would keep popping up every few minutes. A real nuisance. So, I disabled all update checks. I don't really need the notifications because if I haven't updated Flash for a few days, then I know that there will be several new security updates available anyway.

What I can't understand is why Youtube continues to use Flash. I thought everyone was supposed to be abandoning it.

YouTube stopped preferring Flash quite some time ago. I have disabled Flash on my machine, and YouTube plays video using HTML 5.

I'll be glad when the rest of the world catches up. I still run across sites that only use Flash, which makes it nice to have the choice provided by "Click to Flash".

There must be something strange in the way that Youtube has their video player frame set up, because if I don't have flash enabled then it says my browser doesn't recognize any of the available formats even though they have an HTML5 version of the video.

I disabled Flash and saw the same thing Bob sees, and HTML 5 videos wouldn't play.

My experience is the same as tacit's but I did not disable Flash, I uninstalled it. Could that be the difference?

YouTube deprecated Flash because it is not available on iOS (and probably SOB¹ smartphones as well). They do not want to walk away from what is now the largest market share by far. Even Microsloth has endorsed HTML 5 over Flash.

¹ Some Other Brand

Nope! I just trashed Flash and saw the same "Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available" overlay.

Perhaps it's a function of your OS? (Bob is in Snowy, and I'm in El Cap.)

Nope, I'm running Yosemite. Is Snowy still showing up in my profile somewhere?

Nope, sorry; I confused you with another poster who's also got a Flash issue going.