YouTube is starting videos at the midpoint or even at the end of the video on my Apple TV 4K

SOLUTION: Under the ATV video settings, change the format to 4k SDR. Then switch it back to Dolby Vision. Then under video settings, click “match content” and turn “match dynamic range” off.

Now the YouTube app will work perfectly.

Once Google squashes this bug in the YouTube app, we can turn that setting back on. But for now, this is the only solution I’ve found with consistent results lasting for days now.

I’m having the same issue. Some vids will act as if they are going to play, but then just takes me back to the list of videos.

Killing and reopening the app works sometimes. But not all of the time. Annoying as heck.

I think I've worked out what's happening (for me at least). Not a solution, but maybe useful to know. Whenever I go from one video to the next, the second video is starting at the timestamp the previous one ended. E.g., if I finish a 5 minute video and start a 10 minute video, then the 10 minute video will start at the 5 minute mark when the last one finished.

Haven't found out how to make it stop though! It's been doing it for the past couple of days.

UPDATE: it appears to be some new incompatibility bug with Dolby Vision. I changed the ATV video settings from Dolby Vision to 4k HDR and the YouTube app seems to work fine again.

Based on other comments here, I changed the Apple TV Video Format setting from 4KHDR to 4KSDR and You Tube APPEARS to now be behaving.

Anytime any tech has to have a key major feature disabled for said tech to work, it’s an automatic failure in my eyes. I’ve heard the same be said of a lot of Galaxy phones

Thanks for your help! Problem solved

It’s not apple’s responsibility to make sure every OS update will work with every app. App companies are allowed to test their apps on new versions far in advance. Seems YouTube didn’t do a good job identifying and squashing bugs that appeared with this update.

I'm having the same issue. I've found that when I close the application it 'fixes' the issue for one more video, maybe another. Then as you said, videos will start playing 1/2 way through, or all of the way through a video, or sometimes the video won't play at all, just a black screen.

I updated my video settings.. still having trouble. Why pay for ad free or use Apple TV if its this frustrating to use?

Hope the devs take a look soon. Thanks

Talked to Apple support and it looks like we are on our own. Here’s their response:

"I was checking and we have tried all the troubleshooting steps that we could, it seems that the issue is related to the compatibility of the newer tvOS version and the current version of the Youtube app, this kind of issues tend to happen when newer versions of the software aren't fully compatible, in this case I will recommend you to contact the YouTube developer regarding this issue, and also, just waiting some time for a newer release of YouTube or the tvOS could resolve the issue."

Exactly the same here. The problem is, if you end watching a video later than the next one is long, it won't play nothing. E.g you watch a vid for 5:00mins, but the following one is just 4:00mins long, than it sometimes shows a black screen with nothing happening, sometimes it jumps back to the overview, sometimes it shows any follow up video....pretty annoying.

Thank you so much for pointing the right direction !

I don't have a Dolby Surround TV so I was about to jump to another forum to find another hypothesis and hypothetical solution... but I gave a chance to your suggestion and only turned off the “match dynamic range” (no change to the format set to 4K HDR). This alone solved the issue 👍