2 Ways to Watch YouTube Videos Not Available in Your Country

Quick Tips

• You can tweak a YouTube video’s URL to stream videos that are unavailable in your country. To do so, replace the ‘watch?v=’ bit in the URL with ‘v/’.
• If you have the URL to a video taken down by the creator, you can still access it. To watch it, visit archive.org and paste the URL in the search bar.

Basic Fixes:

• Clear YouTube Cache: You may not be able to watch a video on YouTube due to corrupt cache files. Clear the YouTube cache to resolve the issue.

• Try Incognito Mode: It’s possible that one of the extensions you installed is causing problems when trying to watch videos on YouTube. Specifically, if you’re using an ad-blocker extension, you may not be able to watch videos at all. You can try launching YouTube in incognito mode and then attempt to play the video again.

• Check YouTube Servers: If the YouTube servers are down, you may face issues with searching for videos and playing them on smart TVs and other services. You can visit Downdetector to confirm the issue.

Method 1: Use a VPN

Using a VPN is one effective way to bypass YouTube restrictions in your region. However, we recommend avoiding free VPN apps. You may even run into streaming glitches with them.

Instead, you can subscribe to a robust VPN service like ExpressVPN, Surfshark, or NordVPN and download a native app on the desktop. You must sign in with your account details and connect to another region server where the YouTube video is available. If the trick doesn’t work, try a different server.

If you frequently want to access websites and services unavailable in your region, we highly recommend subscribing to a VPN service.

Method 2: Use a Proxy Server

You can also set up a proxy server on your desktop to access YouTube videos unavailable in your region. However, setting up a proxy server is less effective than a VPN network. Additionally, a proxy server doesn’t encrypt internet traffic. Regardless, here’s how you can go about setting up a proxy server.

Step 1: Launch Google Chrome. Click the three vertical dots menu at the top-right corner, and select Settings.

Step 2: Select System and click ‘Open your computer’s proxy settings.’

Step 3: Click Set up beside Manual proxy.

Step 4: Enable the proxy server and enter the IP address and port of the proxy server.

You can exclude specific websites from proxy servers, too. Once done, you should be able to access YouTube videos unavailable in your region.