YouTube videos are blocked or restricted

If you or your students are having trouble accessing YouTube videos through Edpuzzle, take a look at this list of common issues and their solutions.

  1. White screen, sad face, or “Connection was reset” 
  2. "This video is restricted. Please check the Google Workspace administrator"
  3. "Please try again later (Playback ID:XXXXXXX)"
  4. Other errors
  5. YouTube isn't an option at your school

Issue 1: Your school is using a filter

If you get a white screen, sad face, or a message that says “The connection was reset” when trying to watch a video, then your school needs to allow www.youtube.com for teachers and www.youtubeeducation.com and www.youtube-nocookie.com for students.

Contact your IT admin, and share our article on How to allow YouTube at your school as well as our Spec Sheet with them.

If this isn’t possible, you can assign the videos to watch at home, where your students will use their own internet connection.

Issue 2: Restricted Mode

If you get a message that says, “Video unavailable. This video is restricted. Please check the Google Workspace administrator and/or the administrator restrictions,” you’ll need to check the following:

    1. Make sure you approved the video on YouTube while logged in with your teacher account.
    2. Log into YouTube with your Google account and turn off Restricted Mode (at the bottom of your profile icon’s drop-down menu).
    3. Have your students log in to youtube.com using the email address associated with their school accounts before trying again to view their assignments. Double-check that they’re not logged in with their personal account.
    4. Share the Edpuzzle Spec Sheet with your IT admin to make sure there are no filter issues.

If students are still unable to view the video after following the steps above, it could be because of their channel configurations on YouTube. To fix this, students will need to do the following:

    1. Visit https://www.youtube.com/account_advanced.
    2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “DELETE CHANNEL” button. This should solve the issue!

Issue 3: Playback ID error

If you see a message that says, "Please try again later. (Playback ID:XXXXXXX)", this issue is almost always caused by ad blocker browser extensions like AdBlock, PoperBlocker, uBlock, etc. Either pause or disable it (go to your browser settings and then to Extensions) while you're using Edpuzzle to see if that fixes the issue.

Issue 4: Other restrictions

Occasionally, you may see a message that says, “This video contains content from [...]. It is restricted from playback on certain sites…” Unfortunately, this means that the video is restricted for third-party sites, so you won’t be able to view it on Edpuzzle.

If you see the YouTube sad face and get a message that the content is unavailable, this could be because of copyright issues, geographic restrictions, or because the uploader removed the video. It’s not possible to view the video in these cases.

Issue 5: If YouTube isn't an option at your school

You can upload videos directly to Edpuzzle, so they won't be blocked, or try to find videos marked "Teacher upload" or Edpuzzle Originals to use for your assignments. Both teacher uploads and Edpuzzle Originals videos that have been uploaded directly to Edpuzzle so they aren't subject to the same filtering restrictions as YouTube.

To find videos marked "Teacher upload":

    1. Search for your topic using the Edpuzzle search bar at the top of your page.
    2. Click the "Source" filter. 
    3. Choose "Teacher upload."
    4. Click the "Save" button to update your search. 

You can also try flipping your class. This means that you assign the videos for students to watch at home and you get more time in the classroom. If you’re interested in learning more about this practice, check out our self-paced course Edpuzzle Flipped.