Brave Browser EXTREMELY Slow/Laggy on YouTube & Facebook and more (Long Load Times, Buffering, Low Quality) – Started Suddenly

Brave Browser
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1

Hi,

Since last week (April 28 2026), Brave has become almost unusable on certain websites, especially YouTube and Facebook (Just to name some).

Issues:

  • Pages like Facebook and YouTube can take up to 20 seconds to fully load

  • YouTube videos start quickly but after ~1 minute they buffer for 10–20 seconds

  • Video quality drops to ~380p during playback

  • Google Images load very slowly (image renders progressively from top to bottom)

Important:

  • This started suddenly last week (28 April 2026)

  • I did not install any new browser extensions

  • I did not change any settings or network configuration

What I’ve already tried:

  • Enable/disable hardware acceleration

  • Changed ANGLE graphics backend to D3D11 (via brave://flags)

  • Disabled all extensions

  • Updated Brave to latest version

  • Disabled Brave Shields and tested with uBlock Origin instead

  • Updated my graphics driver

None of these made any difference.

Additionnal Info:
Windows 11 up to date
Nvidia Drivers up to date**

Here is my task manager for info on my device:**

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image227×478 4.84 KB

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image757×631 31.1 KB

Here is my computer specs sheet:

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image1130×494 55.7 KB

Right now, YouTube and Facebook are by far the worst affected but lots of site and the overall usage of brave is really difficult.

Is anyone else experiencing this or found a fix, any idea on what the issue could be?

2

@Zopix

Create a new user Profile for Testing:

Create and use AN ADDITIONAL Brave Browser user Profile (Menu --> More tools --> Add profile) - only ← meaning: Do not have any other Brave Browser user Profile tabs/windows open.

When creating this new Brave Browser user Profile for test purposes

  • Do not import anything.
  • Do not add any extensions.
  • Do not allow/enable any Brave Browser “bells and whistles” such as Brave Rewards, Brave Talk, etc.

IF this test Brave Browser user Profile does not present your problem, then possibly, the profile that you have been using, has a problem . . . and that might be caused by one or more extensions, or too many tabs ← complex/conundrum.

4

Not really working when i’m creating a new user profile for testing and closing every other profile tab

5

@Zopix

Re your: ‘Not really working when i’m creating a new user profile for testing and closing every other profile tab’

So … using ONLY the newly created Brave Browser user profile, and having 1 window open to YouTube, plus 1 window open to Facebook, the issue of “Brave Browser EXTREMELY Slow/Laggy on YouTube & Facebook” … remains?

6

I am having similar issues that started also with the update from the 28th of April. Brave is lagging - the loading cursors are showing up often.
I am on the latest macOS (M4 Pro).
My attempts to resolve these issues failed, so I got here searching for a solution.

7

same here, FB takes forever to load, near impossible to write messages in messenger, happened some weeks ago

8

I’m a new Brave user and I’m having those exact same issues with both YouTube and Facebook