If you cannot load a video on your iPhone, it could be due to a lack of storage space on your device, issues with your internet, your storage being optimized, or the operating system being out of date.
Whether you are showing a funny video to a friend, or watching a presentation back for work, taking and watching video on an iPhone is a wonderful feature. While these videos often load in milliseconds, there may be some cases where they simply fail to load.
This can be frustrating and waste a lot of time. But why does it happen? What causes a video to not load properly? Keep reading to not only learn why your video may be unable to load, but also how you can fix the issue.
Contents
Key Takeaways
- Your device having a lack of storage space could be to blame. This is because some higher-quality videos are quite large, and you could get an error if you try to load one without a bit of available storage space on your iPhone.
- Your internet could also be the reason for the failure to load. If it is disconnected or slow for one reason or another, it could interrupt the loading of a video or prevent it altogether.
- Other things to try in order to fix this issue include turning off storage optimization, restarting your device, and updating it to the newest version of iOS.
1. Ensure Your Device Has Enough Storage Space
If your videos are not loading properly, you could have a lack of storage space. Many of these videos are large and playing/loading them can take a good amount of resources. As a result, if your storage is completely full, the device could struggle to open them.
To see if this is the reason your videos aren’t loading, go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage. This page will show you how much free space you have, and also go over which apps are taking up your storage.
While there is no exact amount of free space you should have, many people recommend having at least 2 GB free to ensure high-quality videos and photos can load without an issue.
If you have hardly any space left, freeing up space is as easy as doing things like deleting some photos, removing some apps, or even cleaning up your messages.
2. Check Your Internet
Loading video will often rely on your internet, so it could be the connection to your network that is causing the error.
To check if your internet is working, it’s often as easy as trying to visit a website on your browser to see if it loads. You can also go to your Settings menu to see if you are connected to a Wifi network. If you’re not, simply connect to a network and see if this works.
If you are connected to Wifi and things still aren’t loading, there could be something slowing your internet down. This could be something downloading, or other people in your household using multiple devices at the same time.
You only have a certain amount of internet bandwidth in your home, and the more that is happening on your network, the slower the performance will generally be. You could also try to restart your home internet and see if that helps it speed up.
3. Turn off Optimize Storage
Another thing that could be slowing down your video loading is having the Optimize iPhone Storage feature turned on. This saves all high-resolution photos and videos to the cloud, and keeps compressed versions on your device.
If you try to load the full high-quality version and play it, it may take longer than usual due to it having to be loaded from the cloud, and may not even load at all in some cases.
By turning this feature off, you can ensure that the high-quality versions of videos are kept on your device. This takes up more space, but can lead to faster loading times.
To check whether this feature is on or off, go to Settings > Your Name > iCloud > Photos. In this menu, scroll down and you will see Optimize iPhone Storage, and can turn it on or off as you please.
4. Update to the Newest Version of iOS
In some cases, the issue may be caused by your operating system being out of date. New versions of iOS often introduce various bug and glitch fixes to deal with issues users are experiencing. As a result, it is recommended to update your device whenever possible.
If you are out of date, it could be a random glitch or software issue that is causing your device to do strange things, such as not loading videos. If this is the culprit, the way to fix it is by updating your phone.
This is a quick and easy process and all you need to do is go to Settings > General > Software Update. If you have an update to do, it should pop up and you can simply click Download and Install to start the update. It should only take a few minutes to complete in most cases.
5. Restart Your Phone
In some cases, all it takes to sort out an issue like this, and many others, is to restart your phone. There is no guarantee that this will work to help your videos load, but it only takes a few seconds and is worth a try.
The reason restarting a device can rectify issues like this is that it can clear out and refresh the system memory, clear bad data or strange interactions, and generally give the device a fresh start and a clean slate to work from.
In order to restart your iPhone, you need to press and hold both the volume down button and the side power button for a few seconds. A slider will appear, and you can drag it to turn off the device.
Once off, give the device around 30 seconds or so, and then turn it back on by pressing and holding the side power button until the Apple logo appears, and then release it.
Final Thoughts
Being unable to load a video can be a frustrating and annoying experience, while also wasting a lot of time. I hope this guide helped you learn a few reasons why your videos may not be loading, and some things you can try to fix the issue.
Is there something else this guide should have mentioned/covered? If so, let me know in a comment.
