Just today my IPhone started refusing to play YouTube videos. Either it brings up the beginning of the video and freezes, or I get “An error occurred. Please try again later. Playback ID” whatever.
Is it, by chance, connected to (or trying to) any bluetooth devices? Just for kicks you might try turning bluetooth off.
On my phone (an Android), I can’t play youtube videos in my car. I think the reason is that it’s attempting to send the audio through the speakers but since the radio isn’t tuned to audio from the phone the video is paused. I haven’t experimented further, but I think if I changed the input on my radio to my phone, the youtube video would start back up.
It’s a PITA. IIRC, I can get a youtube video started by either turning off bluetooth or changing the audio output from ‘car’ to ‘phone’. All easy to do, all can be done quickly and from the main screen, but more than I care to do when I have 30 seconds.
Anyways, TLDR, trying shutting off bluetooth and see if it works. If it does, go from there, if it doesn’t make a difference, at least you can rule that out.
Oh, and if you haven’t already, power cycle the phone.
I just tried that in my iPad. For some reason, I’ve been getting the error message on YouTube like the OP. I switched off Bluetooth, and no problem. Thanks, I couldn’t figure out the problem.
Turn bluetooth back on and see what it’s connected to (and trying to push the youtube audio through).
Headphones that aren’t turned on?
Does it just happen in one part of your house that maybe it’s attempting to connect to your car or a computer or a TV? A neighbor could have latched on to it (by accident or otherwise). If you have Nest smoke detectors, I believe they use bluetooth for some types of communication.
A while back my phone showed an active bluetooth connection. Knowing it should only ever connect to my car (and I wasn’t anywhere near it), I turned BT off and back on and everything was fine. IIRC it happened two or three times. I’m still kicking myself for not seeing what it was connected to instead of just dismissing it. Hopefully the phone had just never properly broke it’s connection from my car, as opposed to a neighbor finding a way into it.