Help How to use less data when watching youtube videos?

[DavidNCali]

Hello I'm new here.. I got my first official smartphone.. The sony xperia z, and I love it.. I know there are newer models, but I will upgrade when I have the money.. I realized smartphones nowadays that are running 4glte uses quite a bit of data. I have a limited of 5gb of high speed data and anything over will throttle. When I'm out and about I like to go to the park, chill and watch a couple of YouTube videos. Before I had a phone that was running 3g, and it barely take any data. Now when I stream videos even just 1 minute of video, it will take approximately 10 to 15mb of data.. I tried going into setting and change my 480p to 360p then to 240p and then to 144p... Still my phone that is running 4glte will use approximately 10 to 15mb when viewing a 1 minute video. I was actually running a 10 minute video today, and it nearly took 150mb of data. I was surprised/shocked because this never happened on my old phone. You can say I'm a pretty heavy user when it comes to browsing and viewing youtube video, but I know my limits.. However, my old phone only had 2.5gb of high speed data, and I never use it all... I'm not planning to upgrade my data because it's expensive, and I'm usually on wifi. Any tricks to lower the data when viewing youtube videos on 4glte? My friend who has an ipad running 4g only use 20mb of data when viewing a 10minute video on safari and unchecking HQ..

 

[DavidNCali]

Also, google chrome seems to take alot of data too. I've already used 200mb of data just browsing in chrome. In a total of 4 days, I've used nearly 600mb so far. The park is my kicking spot, and I like to chill, browse and stream videos. But I think with 5gb of data it will not get me very far. I really like T-mobile high speed 4g lte.. It's pretty blazing fast.

 

[mrsmumbles]

You could try a browser that will only download text, that could save a lot of data. Maybe Boat browser?

 

[DavidNCali]

You could try a browser that will only download text, that could save a lot of data. Maybe Boat browser?

What about streaming youtube videos? Is there a way to use less data? I don't mind having a bad quality when streaming on mobile network.

 

[mrsmumbles]

I use ******** which let's me watch in lower quality when available. I think it's available on the Opera app store, be careful not to dl it from other places, they can pack it with viruses if you aren't careful where you get it. It isn't in the play store or the Amazon app store anymore.

 

[mrsmumbles]

Oops, sorry about that. I didn't know it was forbidden to speak of. Oh well.

 

[Slug]

Welcome to AF David. I've moved this to our Xperia Z section so that other users of the device can see it and offer advice.

Go to Settings/Data usage, and you'll see a list of apps in descending order of data consumption. If YouTube is really using this amount of bandwidth it should be listed at or near the top.

 

[Nintendo1889]

Also, google chrome seems to take alot of data too. I've already used 200mb of data just browsing in chrome. In a total of 4 days, I've used nearly 600mb so far. The park is my kicking spot, and I like to chill, browse and stream videos. But I think with 5gb of data it will not get me very far. I really like T-mobile high speed 4g lte.. It's pretty blazing fast.

My technique for staying under the limit is to only sync photos to Facebook and Google plus when on WiFi. Also set Facebook to only automatically download videos on wifi. This alone has kept me under my T-Mobile account limit.

Chrome has a compression option, but it seems big brotherly. I'm not sure if it's linked to your Google account.

There's the opera app and also onavo count, you can only use one of three types of apps, and I'm not sure which one compresses better.

 

[K Rize]

Did you limit mobile data usage in YouTube settings? Also turn off sync and data when not using
I noticed play music has been a data hog lately, tho I never have problems with youtube