Invidious 4K and VP9 test
Oct 12, 2026A couple changes have recently come to my instance:
- Faster loading. A server setting was limiting how fast video could reach most browsers. Videos now load and buffer far ahead much faster at every quality, so expect fewer stalls and higher automatic quality.
- 4K is available for testing. On videos that have it, you can pick 4K from the quality menu. Every quality now shows its codec (H.264, VP9 or AV1), and HDR versions are marked on HDR screens. AV1 is a newer, very efficient codec, but only some newer devices can decode it natively; on others it’s heavy on the CPU.
- VP9 is preferred. When a video offers VP9, the player uses it first. VP9 usually looks as good as H.264 or better at a noticeably lower bitrate, so videos load faster and look sharper on the same connection. YouTube serves VP9 in a format (WebM) our player can’t play, so your browser now repackages it to MP4 on the fly, with no re-encoding and no quality loss. This also brings 4K to Safari, which can’t play AV1 on most Macs.
- Auto quality works properly. It accounts for high-resolution screens, so laptops and phones aren’t stuck at a lower quality, and it remembers your connection speed between videos, so new videos start at the right quality.
- Correct publish dates. Some videos showed as uploaded “today” even when they were years old. They now show their real date.
- Videos that wouldn’t load. If you had seen the “Missing hash key: signatureCipher” bug when loading a video, it has been patched.
- Transcripts. On videos with comments turned on, clicking a transcript line to jump to that moment had stopped working. It works now.
If you like these changes and want more development of the instance, please consider donating . 4k support is there for those who can handle it, if your device can’t, don’t worry, auto quality will stick at easier to run playback. This does mean, however, that users who want to see 4k, must select it.