So, I’ve had iPhone’s for about three years now, and every time I’ve been on my home WiFi network, I’ve NEVER been able to view YouTube videos on it. It just takes too long to load. I assumed that it was because my home WiFi isn’t fantastic, on WiFi it streams higher quality vids by default, and because it’s possible that the network adapter inside my iPhone wasn’t as good as those on my laptop/desktop machines. Annoying as it was, it didn’t bother me that often, as I rarely wanted to use it.

Jump forward to a month ago when I finally got round to buying an iPad, and to my surprise I had very much the same problem. Slow WiFi, especially on YouTube. And if there was ever a device made for viewing YouTube videos, the iPad is just that. So I really wanted to get it fixed, and as YouTube has always streamed fine on my computers, I couldn’t see why it wasn’t possible.

Now if you’ve found this post, I’m pretty sure you’ll have seen all the stuff about the problem lying within your DNS settings right? Well, they are correct, but what many of them don’t do is tell you the correct way of going about fixing it! It’s pretty obvious that one DNS setting won’t work for everyone, as everyone has different brands, makes and models of wireless infrastructure.

So, how to go about it. Firstly, you need access to your routers settings, to do this type your routers IP in to your web browser. Most routers use either http://192.168.2.1/ , http://192.168.1.1/ or http://192.168.1.0/ .

If you can’t find your routers IP address, click Start, search or find the ‘Run’ option in Windows.  Type ‘CMD’ and click OK. When the black input box appears type ‘ipconfig’ find the part of the results that detail your ‘Default Gateway’, this number is your routers IP address.

Once accessed, you should see something like this:

Depending on your router this will probably appear slightly different, however, you need to find the ‘DNS Address’ of your router. (As circled in red on my image.)

If this is different to your iPad or iPhone’s DNS in your WiFi settings, this is why you are having problems.

To check and change your devices DNS settings, click Settings >> Wi-Fi >> Click the blue arrow by your WiFi name >>DNS.

Please make a note of the existing DNS before making any changes in case you need to revert back to your previous settings.

If the DNS is different, please change it to the one found on your routers information page, and hopefully your device should be significantly quicker!

I make no promises that this will work for everyone, however it worked wonders for me, and am sure there are others out there with similar problems!

Please comment my post if you found it useful or require further instruction.

Thanks guys!