YouTube: You’re offline. Check your connection; 10 Common Fixes

“You’re offline. Check your connection.” 

If you use YouTube daily, you may have faced this problem at least once. Even though you have an internet connection, YouTube asks you to connect to the internet. 

The solution to this problem varies based on your device and internet connection type. One thing is constant about this problem, for some reason YouTube app/website can’t use your internet connection. 

Solve You’re offline. Check your connection problem on YouTube.

Clear YouTube Data

Sometimes YouTube app has some issues connecting to the internet. Clearing app data is resetting an application. It will remove all saved data from that app. When you re-launch the application, it will function like a new app install. 

Go to the applications list on your smartphone and find YouTube. Press and hold the YouTube icon. Tap on the App info icon to visit your device’s App manager. 

Tap on Storage usage; it will show you how much storage does YouTube app consume on your device. Click on Clear data; a pop-up will ask for your confirmation; tap on Delete. It will also delete the YouTube cache stored on your device. 

Note: YouTube downloads are also stored on your device. If you clear the app data, it will remove all your downloads. So, be careful before applying this method. 

Check if you have the internet on your SIM card

I often face this issue because of having no internet package. It happens when my internet package finishes in the middle of a video. Without an active internet package, the YouTube app won’t be able to connect to the internet. 

It will show this error. Every major SIM operator has their own application that lets you check your packages. Check if you have any packages or not. If you don’t have a package, recharge to fix this issue. 

Turn on and off Airplane Mode

Sometimes you may have an active internet connection, but your device may face connectivity issues. It often happens when your particular device shows this error, but other devices can connect to the internet. 

That’s where Airplane mode plays a big role. When you turn on Airplane mode on your smartphone, it disconnects you from all network connections. Then when you turn it off, your device connects to the internet. 

It may solve your problem sometimes. 

Reset Access Points

Your smartphone must need an APN to connect to the mobile data. An access point has some basic information about your mobile career. Sometimes your access point may be why the YouTube app can’t connect to the internet. 

Resetting your access point can solve this problem. First, go to Settings > Mobile network. Then select the SIM you use for the internet connection. At the bottom of the page, click on Access point names. Now click on the menu icon at the top right corner and click on Reset access points. 

Now open the YouTube app on your smartphone. If you have an active internet package, it should solve your problem. 

Check Date Usage Limit

Mobile Data is not unlimited like a WiFi network. That’s why all smartphones have a data usage limit option. Suppose the YouTube app surpasses the data usage limit. In that case, your device won’t allow the app to use a network connection anymore. 

You can eliminate this problem by disabling the mobile data usage limit or halting the limit from the YouTube app. 

Change DNS Settings

If you use a WiFi connection on your smartphone or a LAN connection on your computer and this problem occurs, you can try changing the DNS. You can do that without accessing the admin panel of your router. 

For smartphones:

Install the Cloudflare WARP application from your smartphone’s App Store or Play Store. Connect to Cloudflare DNS and open the YouTube app.

For Windows PC:

Using a Windows PC, you can configure private DNS from Settings. Here’s how:

1. Press the Windows key and go to Settings.
2. Navigate to Network & Internet > Advanced network settings.
3. Scroll down and click on More network adapter options.
4. Right-click on your active ethernet/WiFi network and click on Properties. 
5. Select Internet Protocol Version 4 and click on Properties. 
6. Select Use the following DNS server addresses.
7. In the first box, type 1.1.1.1; in the second box, type 1.0.0.1.
8. Click OK.

Flush DNS

You can flush your DNS cache if you are a Windows computer user and can’t access YouTube because it says to connect to the internet. Then when you revisit YouTube, it will do a new DNS lookup. It will clear all saved DNS caches on your computer.

Here’s how to Flash DNS on a Windows PC:

1. Press Windows + S keys and search for cmd.
2. Click on the Command prompt from the search results.
3. Type ipconfig /flushdns and press Enter.

Now open any web browser and visit YouTube.com to see if it works.

Clear Browser Data

There’s no YouTube app for computers. Hence we all use YouTube on a web browser on a computer. Web browsers can cause weird problems compared to mobile browsers. 

Because computer firewalls, extensions, or antivirus can cause serious issues without you noticing it. Clearing your browser data will remove all cached files, cookies, and browsing history. So when you visit YouTube next time, it will fetch everything fresh. Here’s how to clear browser data on a chrome browser: 

1. Open Google Chrome on your computer.
2. Click on the menu icon at the top right corner.
3. Click on History and again click on History.
4. There’s an option called Clear browsing data on the left sidebar; click on it.
5. Switch to the Advanced tab, and in the time range, select All time.
6. Select all options and click on Clear data.

Try incognito mode

If you can’t access YouTube on a computer, maybe a browser extension is causing the problem. Using an incognito window is an excellent way to figure out this problem. 

Make sure you don’t have any extensions allowed in incognito mode. After opening an incognito tab, visit YouTube. If it works properly, you must clean up suspicious extensions until it starts working.

Check YouTube Outage

Google services going offline is the 8th wonder of the modern world. However, due to some technical issues, an outage may occur, which may cause YouTube to stop working for a while. After trying all the solutions, if you still can’t access YouTube, check their social media handles to figure out whether there’s an ongoing issue with YouTube. But I hope you will have your problem solved before that.