I'm running Chrome on my Mac and all of a sudden videos started playing in the HTML5 player instead of the Flash player.
I am not in the HTML5 trial, the button says Join instead of Leave and I have tried joining and leaving to try and toggle something but that hasn't worked. I have even tried adding &html5=false to the end of the URL and not even that has seemed to work.
Has anyone any idea how to switch it back to Flash Player?
You can use the YouTube Options extension for Chrome:
Update (2014-04-12): the YouTube Options extension for Chrome now costs $2:
"YouTube Options" cost $2.00 per month, below is a copy of the user agreement one has to confirm prior to using it.
This extension is based on a paid subscription model. It costs a flat fee of $1.99 per month, with half of all proceeds going to non-profit organizations. Why the monthly fee? YTO is a fully supported, ever-evolving product and half of the subscription fee goes toward sustaining the level of effort needed to develop quality software. But we’re not just trying to make our product better — we’re trying to make the world better, too. The other half of the subscription fee is donated to causes we believe in. Visit the SPOI site to learn about the charities we are supporting this year. For more information on the ways you can customize your YouTube experience, explore the options here, or get the full list of more than 120 configuration options on the YouTube Options site. Until you purchase a subscription license using PayPal, YouTube Option’s functionality will be disabled.
Which means I won't use it anymore.
I found a solution here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.extensions/0ZgKDAFfUDc
Here's how I disabled HTML5 video in Chrome on Windows: Find the file called ffmpegsumo.dll where Chrome is installed (C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\30.xxxxx\ for me)
Worked for me as well, but after a while the html5 player returned. Maybe we will have to remove this file each time Chrome is updated.
I had this problem but like you lot all the fixes on the web either are payed for or ffmpegsumo.dll always comes back after a period. I have now fixed mine permanently and here is how I did it.
This is for a Windows based Computer
Reboot the computer and thats it ffmpegsumo.dll will never come back because the computer will now not allow it
Here is an extension that forces Flash on YouTube (tested on 02/05/2015).
Also, to remove the annoying fullscreen message type in the address bar: chrome://plugins/, find: "Adobe Flash Player" and check the box next to Always allowed.
Finally found a fix! So simple I wonder why I never thought of it in the first place..
Simply deleting all the cookies that youtube.com has saved switched me back to the flash player.
My best guess is that when it came time to opt-out from the HTML5 trial the cookie was never properly cleared or set back to flash.
If you're using Chrome on OSX, Go to the Application folder, right click on "Google Chrome" click on "Show Package Contents" then navigate to Contents/Versions/{version-number}/Google Chrome Framework.framework/Libraries.
Then rename or delete the .so file that contains ffmpeg in the name. Restart Chrome
If your using Chrome on Windows 8: Navigate to Program Files/Google/Chrome/Application/{version-number}/ and rename or delete ffmpegsumo.dll
Restart Chrome
After completing the above if you right click on a youtube video you'll see that it uses the flash player version.
The only issue with the above is that whenever Chrome has an update the ffmpeg file will be restored, so you'll need to repeat the above steps.
Override your UserAgent string to some older browser, like Firefox 4 or IE8, and reload the page.
