How to fix "Quality Unavailable" on YouTube

Quality Unavailable is an annoying issue, preventing you from changing quality. Luckily, it's normally an easy fix

Written by Tomas Lyngen

Published: 13 Aug 2024

Causes

There can be a few different causes of Quality Unavailable, but the two most common issues are Smart Downloads feature for YouTube Premium subscribers, and that the video was just uploaded and isn't ready yet in other qualities

Smart Downloads

YouTube's Smart Download feature is a convenient feature for you to always have some videos downloaded. Where YouTube will automatically download videos while on Wi-Fi and rotate what's downloaded, so that there's always something new to watch

Unfortunately it can also block you from selecting desired quality. As YouTube will prioritize to watch the downloaded video, in the quality it was downloaded

Newly released video

YouTube sometimes need time to process the different resolutions of a video, so if you watch a recently uploaded video and can't change quality, the issue can be as simple as it's not yet available

Reason is that YouTube is design to prioritize downloaded content, before

Fixes for Quality Unavailable

Smart Downloads

For this there's two fixes, where you can either delete the video you have issues with or disable Smart Download

Delete video

Open YouTube
Go to; You > Downloads > Smart Download
Find the video you can't change quality on
Click on the three dots and then Delete from downloads
Return to the video and Quality should be available again

Disable Smart Download

Open YouTube
Go to; You > Downloads > Smart Download
Toggle off Smart Downloads
Return to the video and Quality should be available again

Newly released video

Wait a few minutes and try again, YouTube sometimes need slight time to prepare the higher qualities

Restart YouTube

A restart fixes most issues and can be worth a try, if all else fails. If you have a dedicated YouTube app, restart it and if you're using a browser, restart the browser