If your browser has been feeling unusually slow on YouTube lately, you’re not imagining it. There have been reports Feeling Stacked on Reddit And over the past week in browser forums, users have noticed frozen tabs, stuttering videos, and overall performance drops in the middle of the clock. Turns out, it’s a YouTube browser bug.
According to the developers Digging Through Mozilla’s Bugzilla Bug TrackerThe problem comes back to a rendering loop inside YouTube’s interface. The row of buttons (Like, Share, Save and rest) below the video player automatically collapses when the screen does not have enough horizontal space for them all.
The problem starts when hiding one of those buttons makes the menu container a little wider. This tricks YouTube’s code into thinking there’s now enough space, so it adds the button back. This causes overflow again, YouTube hides the button again, the container becomes wider again.
This cycle repeats at a rapid pace, forcing your browser to constantly recalculate and recreate the layout. Some users have reported the YouTube tab alone Consumption of more than 7GB RAM. This also increases CPU usage, with a Reddit post showing CPU cores nearing their limit while the tab barely responds.
Which browsers are affected
This YouTube browser bug is not limited to one browser. Reports have come in from Firefox, Brave, and Edge users, and both Firefox-based and Chromium-based browsers appear to hit the same wall. Initially, users attributed this to ad blockers or recent Firefox updates. Once Brave and Edge users reported similar symptoms, the focus shifted to YouTube’s own code. Mozilla developers are looking into the issue on behalf of Firefox, but no solution has yet emerged from Google or YouTube.
If you use uBlock Origin, there is a temporary solution. Blocking the ytd-menu-renderer element via a custom filter disables the problematic button row completely. You lose quick access to the Like and Share buttons below the video, but the loop is closed. Google has not publicly acknowledged the YouTube browser bug.
