YouTube and Vimeo are the two most popular video hosting platforms. While YouTube does not require you to log in to view the videos hosted on the site, Vimeo requires you to register to view HD content on their platform. It is still very popular among users, and many creators host their videos on the platform.
Some Windows 10 users have reported that Vimeo videos won’t play on their device when they open the site from Google Chrome. Here, I shall discuss how you can solve if videos won’t play on Chrome.
How To Solve Vimeo Videos Won’t Play On Windows 10?
You might see one of the following errors in Chrome:
- A video will not load
- A video shows up blank
- A gray box is displayed instead of a video
- Chrome freezes or crashes while loading video
This can be annoying as you may be missing out on some important content on your device. Here are some of the simple methods that you can try to resolve the Chrome videos not playing error.
Solution 1: Check Your Network Connection
Many times users face this error due to an unstable network. If your network connection disconnected midway, the video may fail to load, and you will see videos not playing on your device.
First, try opening the webpage in another browser. If the webpage fails to load on other browsers as well, there is a possibility that there may be some error with your internet connectivity.
On nearly every kind of network, there is a timeout period, after which the connectivity throttles upon continued usage. Restarting your router and putting your device on Airplane mode and back, will reset the network, and the throttle should be over. This will clear the network errors, and you should be able to resolve the Google Chrome error.
On Windows, you can try clearing the DNS cache as well. To do that:
- Open an elevated Command Prompt. To do this, open a Run window by pressing Win + R. Type cmd and press Ctrl + Shift + Enter to launch Command Prompt with administrative privileges.
- Type the following command to flush your DNS cache:
ipconfig /flushdns - Wait for the confirmation message and then try loading your web pages again.
Solution 2: Allow Flash On The Site
Although Adobe Flash is being phased out, many sites still require flash for the proper functioning of the website. If you see an error that says, “Click to enable Adobe Flash Player”, it is possible that the website requires the permission to play flash to play the video.
- On your computer, open Google Chrome.
- Visit the Vimeo page of the video that you want to play.
- To the left of the web address, click the Lock or Info
- To the right of “Flash,” click the arrows present next to the setting.
If you do not see the Flash option, click on Site settings. - Locate Flash from the list of site settings available.
- Choose Always allow on this site.
- At the top left, click on the Reload button or press F5 to reload the website.
If your Vimeo videos won’t play error was being caused by improper permissions for flash, it should now be resolved.
Solution 3: Check For Any Broken Extensions
If you have confirmed that only the Chrome browser is unable to play videos from Vimeo, it is possible that some broken extensions may be causing the error on your device.
To check if that is the case, open the video that you were having the error on using Incognito Browsing mode. Run an Incognito Window by right-clicking on the taskbar icon and selecting New Incognito Window.
Now try accessing the page using the Incognito window. If the page loads normally in Incognito mode, there is probably some broken extension on your device that is causing this error to appear.
The extensions by default are disabled in this mode, and you can confirm that the error was caused by some broken extension if you do not face this error anymore in Incognito mode.
Start by enabling the extensions one by one and check if the error persists.
Solution 4: Toggle Hardware Acceleration
If enabled, the hardware acceleration uses computer hardware specially made to perform some functions more efficiently than possible in software running on a general-purpose CPU.
If the hardware is used to smoothen the performance, the resources tangled in doing so can create compatibility problems and hence cause the video not playing in Chrome error.
Note: Post turning off hardware acceleration, you may see a bump in the CPU and other system resources usage. This is natural and shouldn’t bother much. If you see a drastic change, you can turn it back on.
Follow these steps to disable hardware acceleration in Chrome:
- Open Google Chrome.
- Click the hamburger menu (≡).
- Select Settings.
- Scroll down and click on Advanced
- Under the System subsection, locate Hardware Acceleration.
- Turn the toggle towards off next to “Use hardware acceleration when available”.
- Restart your browser.
After you restart your browser, you will see that the issue does not occur anymore.
Solution 5: Clear Chrome Data
The cache is the data stored on your device by various websites, to load data from them faster the next time you load the website. However, sometimes a mismatched cache data can cause all sorts of errors, and this error is one of them. To solve your Chrome won’t load pages error; clear all your Google Chrome data like cookies and cached images and files.
To clear Google Chrome data, press the Ctrl + Shift + Delete in a new tab to open the Clear browsing data dialog box. Here select All time from the Time range drop-down menu. Then select Clear data.
Solution 6: Reinstall Google Chrome
If all other solutions fail, you can try reinstalling Chrome as a last resort. A fresh install will reset all the broken files and settings, and form the data libraries again.
- Uninstall the Chrome application from the Control panel. Then remove the residual files as well. To remove the residual files, you can use a third-party junk file cleaner like CCleaner.
- Then download a fresh copy of the installer from the Google website (link) and run the installer.
- Wait for the installer to finish.
Now check if the issue still persists.
Wrapping Up
So there you have it. Now you know how to resolve the Vimeo videos won’t play error using the one or a combination of the solutions provided above. Comment below if you found this useful, and tell us how you solved the ‘Chrome videos not playing’ error on your device.
