I'm getting really tired of this issue with Safari.
Every single day, sometimes multiple times a day, videos suddenly stop loading on YouTube, X, Instagram, and other video streaming platforms.
On YouTube, I get the infamous: "An error occurred. Please try again later. (Playback ID: ...)".
Once this happens, refreshing the page doesn't help. The only workaround I've found is to:
- Open Activity Monitor.
- Force quit the Safari Graphics and Media process.
- Reload the page.
And voilà, videos start playing normally again. Until the next time it happens.
This has been going on for months, across multiple Safari/macOS updates. Meanwhile, the same videos work perfectly fine in Chrome (and no, switching to Chrome is not a solution).
I've already tried disabling extensions and using Private Browsing, but neither makes any difference.
It's incredibly frustrating that something as basic as video playback keeps breaking in Apple's own browser, especially when the issue seems to be related to Safari's media process.
I'm starting to wonder if Apple's own developers even use Safari as their daily browser, because I can't possibly be the only one experiencing this.
Has anyone found a permanent fix, or are we just supposed to keep killing Safari Graphics and Media several times a day?
I use a MacBook Air M2 2022, macOS Golden Gate 27.0.1, Safari version 27.0.1 (22625.1.29.11.28).