Recent updates to the YouTube app for Android have caused crashes for several users. While not affecting everyone, problem reports began to emerge about a week ago on different social media platforms, citing an unreliable experience when trying to use the app. The issue presents itself when videos are loaded, but no description, comment, or linked video will appear. After a few seconds, the app crashes, and closing and reopening it simply repeats the process.
Anyone else over the past few weeks been dealing with this really annoying issue with YouTube for Android, where it loads the video and starts playing, but no UI shows up and the app throws an ANR (app not responding)? pic.twitter.com/senV8eaWnT
-Artem Russakovskii (@ArtemR) January 22, 2024
As mentioned by 9to5Google, at this point the only two available options to immediately fix the situation include reverting to an older version of the app or installing the beta version. While it may seem fairly simple, reverting to an older version of the app does not necessarily guarantee that you will end up on a version predating the onset of the problem, and installing the beta version can be challenging, considering the Android beta program for the YouTube app is always full. Another option could be to sideload the beta version of the app, but this is a practice that is generally not recommended for inexperienced users.
Hopefully, a functional version of the YouTube app for Android will be released soon for all affected users. YouTube is a widely used app and not being able to use it on your Android device can severely impact your smartphone experience.