Go back to YouTube's old buffering to skip without rebuffering
Update: The extension has been removed from the Chrome Web Store. You can try Magic Actions for YouTube instead which offers similar functionality.
Some time ago YouTube switched to the new Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) buffering technology that segments media streams into blocks. Dash supposedly improves video playback for fast connections, and while that is often a great thing, it has one slight drawback that you may have noticed when you are skipping in videos or when you used to hit pause to let the video buffer completely.
The first thing that you may notice is that YouTube is no longer buffering all of the video when you hit the pause button. In fact, when you hit pause the buffering stops right away and will not commence until you hit the play button again.
The second issue that you may have with Dash is related to that. When you skip, you may notice that it takes a moment before the buffering kicks in and the video starts to play. This is more severe on slow Internet connections where it take more than a second or so.
If you prefer the old way of buffering on YouTube, for instance because you are on a slow connection and prefer to hit pause to wait for the video to buffer fully before you hit play to avoid any hiccups during playback, then you can use third party tools for that.
Google Chrome users can install the YePpHa Center for YouTube extension which provides them with the means to do so. It is available as a download on the official Chrome store
When you visit YouTube for the first time after installation, you see a popup informing you about the extension's settings. You can launch them alternatively with a right-click on the icon that it adds to Chrome's main toolbar and the selection of Options from the context menu.
Here you need to switch to Player in the menu and uncheck the Dash Playback option that is presented to you here. Once disabled, you can start using YouTube like before so that you can skip in a video that is playing without waiting for it to buffer first again before it starts to play from the selected position.
Firefox users can check out the official Mozilla Add-ons repository where they may find a comparable extension as well for their browser.
