Browsers tend to act as a bridge between the internet and the people trying to access the internet. On a daily basis, most of us tend to spend a reasonable amount of time on the internet, searching and digging through the content we like. We also watch videos on a lot of websites and social media platforms, these videos tend to belong to various categories, like tutorial videos, gaming videos, news-related videos, or even religious videos. We can’t help but consume this video-oriented content on various sites, like YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, etc, in one way or another, either consciously or completely unconsciously.
It is also a known factor that a browser may also come with plenty of issues, despite being helpful and efficient. These issues are often patched in regular updates; however, some errors do tend to take place due to some mistake on the user’s behalf or due to a lack of a certain procedure in the browser settings which can lead to a lot of problems. Among all these inconveniences which we often face in the form of bugs or errors is the ‘Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available’.
A lot of people are left baffled when they are faced with this error, especially because it doesn’t allow a certain video or multiple videos to be played on your web browser. Each time you try to play a video, this error appears on the video player. Essentially this error directly impacts the user experience, by halting it entirely as our desired videos have no hopes of playing. It is reported that this error occurs when we try to play some videos, however, it doesn’t affect all videos.
Currently, the most popular browser is Google Chrome, and the most popular video sharing and viewing website is YouTube. Chrome often hints at its inability to perform certain tasks that you might throw at it, in this case, Chrome would display the fact a video can’t be played through bad video quality or low frame rates, it also depicts this factor by unusual buffering even if your internet connection is stable and lastly by portraying error messages on the video player itself.
To further understand this issue, we need to know about video formats as well. Consider a video format as a vessel or a container that holds all the necessary information about a certain video. This information can be in the form of the related audio of that video file, along with subtitles that may come with it or any other relevant metadata. The audio and video are stored in separate containers or formats for a video file, and they are compressed by ‘lossy compression’ to reduce the file size. Other than a container, there is also a codec, which decodes and encodes the multimedia present on a video file. Many video formats exist, the most popular among these formats are MP4, MOV, WMV, FLV etc.
The causes of such a problem can be easily identifiable, but sometimes these causes are extremely technical and require a person who knows how to deal with them. However, we have made it easier for the average user by listing a few possible causes in a comprehensive and simplified manner, so it is easier to identify the root of this problem, which will allow us to better understand the possible fixes.
- Your browser may require an update: It is true that bugs and errors often find their way into the workings of a browser. In order to deal with such issues, developers of these browsers tend to provide regular updates, with various patches and features to remove these errors or potentially reduce their impacts. A potential cause of the ‘Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available’ is an outdated browser or a browser that hasn’t had the updates to deal with errors or to support newer video formats, possessed by a video.
- Extensions or Add-ons might interfere: People often use extensions or add-ons to make their browsing experience convenient and efficient. YouTube Flash Player is an Ad- on that allows YouTube videos to be played through Flash instead of HTML5. The use of Flash Player is an extremely outdated way of playing YouTube videos, so it becomes necessary to remove this Ad-on.
- Problems with the Internet Connection: Sometimes an unstable internet connection is the direct cause of a lot of errors that tend to appear in our Browsers. Problems with the ‘Internet Service Provider’ or the ‘ISP’ have the potential to uproot many inconveniences, that may disrupt your time on the internet.
- JavaScript is not enabled: If your current browser is Google Chrome and it is displaying the ‘Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available’ error, then it is possible that JavaScript has been disabled in Google Chrome due to some reason. Some websites require using JavaScript to play videos and the Java Script could be turned off due to some reason. A possibility is that JavaScript got disabled due to a malware attack, as Chrome often disables such programs when faced with threats.
- Overflow of Cache: Cache memory is designed to make our browsing experience quicker, by saving some internet content and web pages. However, if a lot of cache gets collected then it might start interfering with all sorts of intricacies of a browser. A large sum of cache can potentially cause a lot of errors, even halting the videos that you might want to play on some website, by displaying all sorts of errors.
- Disabled Media Sources on Mozilla Firefox: If you are using Mozilla Firefox for viewing videos on the internet and you are facing the ‘Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available’ error, it might be possible that media sources are not enabled in the configuration of your Firefox browser.
Possible Solutions
After we have identified the possible roots of this error, we can now take a look at various methods to fix this error. These methods are compiled with the intention of a guaranteed solution for resolving this error.
Clearing the Cache by deleting the browser history
Web Browsers tend to keep a list of all the web pages and websites we visit during our time surfing the internet. This makes it easier for us to access previously visited websites and allows us to keep a track of the various websites being accessed from a device. As we discussed earlier, browsers tend to keep a cache memory as well, to make your experience more efficient, by providing the ability to load webpages quicker as the cache retains some content of these websites that you have visited before. However, when the size of the cache exceeds a reasonable amount, it tends to disrupt us with errors in different ways. So, we recommend that you clear your cache regularly. If you are on Google Chrome, follow these steps to delete your browser history.
Step 1: Click on the three dots icon on the top right-hand side of your Chrome Window.
Step 2: A menu will appear. In this menu, you can see the ‘History’ option hover over it to reveal another menu. Click on ‘History’ or press the key combination ‘Ctrl + H’ and the ‘History’ window will appear.
Step 3: In the left sidebar, click on the ‘Clear browsing data’ option, and a new window will appear.
Step 4: Now you will be presented with a menu with various options to delete your history. You will be able to see a ‘Time range’ bar, with the option to clear your history over various time ranges. We recommend that you clear the history by choosing the ‘All time’ option. This will clear all the browsing data ever recorded on your browser.
Step 5: Check the boxes to clear the web history, the cache, and the cookies.
Step 6: Click on the ‘Clear Data’ button to delete your browsing history, along with cache and cookies.
After you have cleared the cache try playing the video that was troubling you before and this time it won’t present an error.
Disable the Browser Add-ons
It is possible that an extension or an add-on might be interfering with the browser and not allowing you to play a video. If you have YouTube Flash Player enabled, it can be the direct cause of this error, so we recommend that you follow these steps to disable Flash, as it is outdated and was replaced by HTML5.
Step 1: Go to the Chrome menu by clicking on the three dots icon in the top right corner of your Window.
Step 2: Click on the ‘More tools’ option.
Step 3: Click on the ‘Extensions’ option.
Step 4: The Extensions window will appear. Try identifying all the possible extensions that might be causing this problem, especially the YouTube Flash Player.
Step 5: Disable the extensions or remove them entirely.
Restart chrome and try playing a video and hopefully, this error will be resolved.
Update your Browser
As we discussed earlier, constant updates allow your browser to keep up with video formats and grant immunity against bugs and errors by patching them. Updates also introduce various features that may enhance your browsing experience. This means an outdated browser, doesn’t have the ability to keep up with the error and different video formats. If you use Google Chrome, we suggest that you follow these steps to update your browser to protect it against threats and errors.
Step 1: Click the ‘three dots’ icon on the top right corner of your Chrome Window.
Step 2: Hover over the ‘Help’ option to reveal a menu.
Step 3: Click on ‘About Google Chrome’ and a new window will appear.
Step 4: Chrome will start searching for newer versions, if they are available an option to update chrome will be presented.
Step 5: The update process may take some time.
Step 6: When Chrome has been updated, a ‘Relaunch’ button will appear. Click on it to run Chrome in its latest version.
After updating and relaunching Chrome, you can access various new features and enjoy the new protection methods against malware lastly, a lot of errors will be patched and debugged.
Enabling Media Sources in Mozilla FireFox
This method of solving this error is exclusive to Mozilla FireFox and its configuration settings. This fix has proven to resolve this error most of the time. In order to perform this fix on your Mozilla FireFox Web Browser, you must follow these simple steps.
Step 1: Type ‘about:config’ In the address bar of your FireFox tab and press ‘Enter’ on your keyboard.
Step 2: A warning will appear, but in order to proceed you must click ‘I accept the risk’. Now you will be able to access the configuration window of the browser.
Step 3: In the search bar of this configuration, type ‘media.mediasource.enabled’.
Step 4: Now ensure if the following are set as ‘True’
media.mediasource.enabled
media.mediasource.webm.enabled
media.mediasource.mp4.enabled
Step 5: If any of the above is ‘False’, you must double click on them to make them ‘True’.
Step 6: Restart your browser and the error or the Mozilla FireFox will be resolved.
More Possible Solutions
The solutions discussed above, have a high chance of resolving the ‘Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available’ error. However, there are a few more ‘traditional’ methods that can be used as well. It is possible that your browser of preference might be at fault.
In this case, you can change your browser to a different one and see if the error appears on the other browser as well. In case the error doesn’t appear you can try resetting or reinstalling your previous browser. Sometimes due to a malicious attack, some settings get changed, causing a lot of issues with a browser, including options like HTML5 being disabled. Resetting or Reinstalling can also fix the issue.