I haven't had it only give me lower quality options, but awhile back I noticed it was always defaulting to lower quality so I installed the YouTube High Definition extension. Haven't had an issue since.
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Just download what you want to watch, fuck em!
YouTube dislikes my set up so much I cannot search on the site. Have to search videos on a search engine and then follow the link. I never see a single ad due to UBO. A lot of videos show as unavailable and ask for a log in. I just download any videos I want to watch as mp4. Fuck YouTube
IIRC, it could be an encoding thing. They've nerfed their old video encoding to push the newer format that is more "data efficient" (read: looks like shit). They've stopped hosting higher quality "legacy" encoded vids.
It's why sometimes in FreeTube when YouTube decides to cut off the stream they're not getting ads from, it'll switch protocols and reload with the 360p-only encoding.
Not sure what would lock you into legacy formats in FireFox, though.
The only shady shit I see is Google deliberately buggering at the start of a video then have the gaul to show a popup saying "expericing issues? Click here to tshoot" when we both know its googles own antiadblock detection trying to annoy you.
Are you watching videos right after they're uploaded? Iirc Youtube takes a bit longer to make 1080p available, so there's a bit of time after upload when it only has lower options.
Also, I'm using Chromium, and Youtube sometimes just gives me the 360p version, but the 1080p is available to switch to. But it's been doing that since forever.
edit: misspelled longer as lower
"Youtube doing some shady stuff" could be their trademark. Well, it could be all of the enshittified Web2.0's trademark.
FWIW I use yt-dlp and get exactly the res I asked for.
Change your browser's user agent. This basically makes Firefox wear a Chrome mask to fool websites.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/uaswitcher/
I also recommend using Ad Nauseum and Sponsor Block extensions. In addition to blocking ads, Ad Nauseum also sends bogus data to trackers and fakes a click on ever ad, which throws off metrics and forces Google to pay for ads people didn't see.
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Not noticed this, still get 4k. YouTube doesn't do HDR on Firefox though....
I'm a Firefox user and no. I still have 1080p available. The only thing I noticed, that the comments moved to the right side and the suggestions got removed. Comments on the right side do suck hard though and on most comments, I can't expand them.
ReVanced had recently some problems, stopping playback after 30 seconds.
No I can still get the higher resolutions but they look meh because the bitrate is low in the free tier. Also there's always a delay when starting a video in firefox.
I only use Firefox and I haven't noticed this at all. A video I was just watching went all the way up to 2k resolution. Closest I've seen to this was a YT to mp4 converter that couldn't go above 360p.
Works on my machine
Huh. One more reason to sail the high sees. I am so invidious >:D
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