[Debugging] – YouTube Videos Not Playing on OnePlus 3 in 1080p Resolution

Date August 10, 2016 Author Catherine Category Video Tips, YouTube

OnePlus 3 applied Oxygen OS which improved the OnePlus 3, but also brought some bugs that affected the core usability of the phone. One of the bugs is that when you play YouTube video on OnePlus 3, the resolution is limited to 480p for some strange reason. On such videos, selecting 1080p as video playback resolution will simply do nothing — irrespective of your Wi-Fi or mobile data network speed. The video will continue to playback in 480p resolution.

For a heavy YouTube, it’s really a headache. Nonetheless, until both OnePlus and Google sort out this problem, there are a few workarounds to this problem.

Solution 1: Play 1080p YouTube Videos on OnePlus 3 with NewPipe

The method one to play YouTube on OnePlus in 1080P is to install a third-party YouTube app called NewPipe, a lightweight YouTube player for Android that does not use any of its proprietary APIs. This app can be downloaded through F-Droid, and is not available on the Google Play Store.

Solution 2: Play 1080p YouTube Videos on OnePlus 3 with Device Faker Xposed module

If your OnePlus 3 is already rooted, you can use the Device Faker Xposed module to spoof another Android device like the Nexus 5X or Nexus 5 to solve the playback issue.

Solution 3: Play 1080p YouTube Videos by Downloading and Converting

The third method is a little bit complex but gives you the biggest convenience. You can download your favorite YouTube video with some YouTube Downloader on PC then transfer the downloaded YouTube video to OnePlus 3.

Before putting YouTube video to OnePlus 3, you’d better make sure your YouTube video is MP4 format cause some YouTube videos will be FLV and WMV, WebM. So when you download YouTube 1080p video to PC, you can use Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate <Mac version> to integrate them to MP4 files. This YouTube video converter can transcode any video including MKV, WMV, H.265/HEVC, FLV, WebM, VOB, ISO, etc to 3GP, MP4 for OnePlus 3, OnePlus 2 and other Android phones.

It enables you to adjust A/V parameters such as compress 4K to 1080p for your devices. Its batch conversion feature allows you batch convert YouTube 1080p video to Oneplus 3 which can save you a lot of time. What’s more, if needed, it also can extract sound like MP3 audio from YouTube video.

Step-by-Step to Convert YouTube 1080p Video to Oneplus 3

Step 1: Import YouTube video 

Click “Files” to import your YouTube video files. Besides YouTube video, Tivo, YIFI video, Netflix video are also supported.

Step 2: Choose output format

Click the Format bar to select output profile. Here I suggest “H.264 HD Video(*.mp4)” from “HD Video”. This format not only can be played on OnePlus, but also be playable on iPad Pro, iPad Mini 4, iPad Air, Galaxy TabPro, Galaxy Note 7, Galaxy S7/S7 Edge, etc.

Step 3: Convert YouTube video to OnePlus

Hit "Convert" to start to re-encode YouTube video to MP4 for Oneplus 3. When the process ends, just transfer the video to Oneplus 3 then you can play YouTube video in 1080 resolution.

Not being able to play 60fps videos in Full HD resolution is surely going to be a bummer for a lot of people who are YouTube addicts, but this is just a minor bug that should be hopefully fixed sooner than later by OnePlus and YouTube/Google. Until then, try any one of the three solutions mentioned above to

Additionally, this video converter not only can convert YouTube video, but also can convert video to YouTube. For example, it can convert your Weekly Sermon Video, Dji Phantom 4 footage, 4K video, even Blu-ray to YouTube supported video for uploading and sharing.