You’re not alone: a bug is sending YouTube’s web player into an infinite loop of lag

• YouTube’s web player apparently has a rendering bug that sends browsers into an infinite loop of visual changes.
• The constant page rendering loop is causing processor and RAM usage to skyrocket, with users reporting memory consumption in the gigabytes.
• Users with browsers suffering from the bug are noticing extreme lag, stuttering, and frame drops during video playback.

YouTube users are reporting issues with the platform’s web player, with the site causing unexplained browser lag and extreme memory usage. The stutters, frame drops, and RAM consumption are affecting users of multiple browsers, including Firefox and Brave, according to posts (1, 2) on Reddit.

The culprit appears to be a rendering bug in YouTube code that sends browsers into an infinite loop, per savvy developers on a Mozilla Bugzilla thread (via PiunikaWeb). Essentially, the code issue makes browsers render and resize visual elements of YouTube’s web player in endless and rapid fashion, overwhelming the computer’s processors and memory.