7 Fixes for “Videos Not Playing on Your iPhone” Error

Part 1. Why Videos Are Not Playing on iPhone?

• Unstable network environment: When playing online (such as YouTube, BiliBili), weak Wi Fi signal or limited cellular data are the most common reasons.

• System or application cache conflict: Failure to restart the phone or clean up the app cache for a long time can cause conflicts in rendering components.

• Storage space is extremely scarce: Video playback requires a certain amount of "buffer space", and if the remaining space is less than 1GB, the video often cannot be loaded.

• Old App/system version: Some new video encoding protocols require support from newer versions of the iOS system.

• File format incompatibility: Although iPhone supports most mainstream formats, native players may not be able to open certain special MKV, AVI, or high bitrate encodings (such as some 10 bit HEVC).

• File damaged or corrupted: If your video files are broken, they cannot be played on any devices or plarforms.

Part 2. 7 Solutions to Fix Videos Not Playing on iPhone

Based on the factors that cause the problem “Videos Not Playing on iPhone” mentioned above, we can use corresponding solutions.

Solution 1. Check and reset network settings

If the loading loop keeps spinning, it is usually a network problem.

Firstly, we can switch Wi-Fi to cellular network (or vice versa).

If it still doesn't work, reset the network settings. Go to Settings > General > Transfer or Restore iPhone > Restore > Restore Network Settings.

(Note: This will clear the saved Wi-Fi password).

Solution 2. Restart the phone

Another chance that video won't play on iPhone is because your iPhone may get frozen, so that it cannot respond to your video playback command. In this case, you are able to perform a soft reset. Given your iPhone is being frozen on the video playback, you can press and hold the Sleep/Wake button as well as the Home button at the same time until you see the Apple logo appearing.

Solution 3. Clear up Cache

Whether you use Browser or App to watch a video on iPhone, caches may cause that video playback is not working. So, you need to clear website history or applications’ cache.

Set Safari as an example. Navigate to Settings and choose the option of Safari. Tap Clear History and Website Data. Then a pop-up window shows up, confirm it. Finally return to see whether videos will play on iPhone.

Solution 4. Release device storage space

You need to go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage to check the left storage space. Make sure there is at least 2-3 GB of remaining space. If not, delete unnecessary photos or large apps to fix the “Videos won't play on iPhone” error.

Solution 5. Update Apps or iOS system

Go to the App Store to check if the corresponding video app (such as Netflix) has been updated.

Alternatively, go to Settings > General > Software Update to ensure that the system has been updated to the latest version.

Solution 6. Convert Video Formats

Why won't my videos play on my iPhone? Actually, there are many reasons cause videos won't play on iPhone. The common one is for the video incompatibility. You should play the videos that are compatible with iPhone, or videos won't play on iPhone. Here you can learn video format for iPhone.

• H.264, up to 1.5Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats.

• H.264 video, up to 768kbps, 320 by 240 pixels, and 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48 kHz, and stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats.

• MPEG-4 video up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48 kHz, and stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats.

To convert videos to iPhone compatible formats, you can use Video Converter Ultimate. This video tool enables you to download online videos or convert videos to iPhone video format without any hassle.

Here are steps of using Aiseesoft Video Converter Ultimate to change your videos to formats compatible with iPhone:

Solution 7. Repair Damaged Videos

Sometimes you can't play videos on your iPhone might because these videos are damaged or corrupted. In this case, if you have other playable videos that are shot by the same devices or saved from the same sources with damaged videos, you can use Aiseesoft Video Repair to fix your videos. This video repairment tool lets your corrupt videos restore to normal and have the same quality as the sample video. And its success rate of video fixing is amazing. As long as you have the standard-compliant sample videos, you will get videos in good condition.

Part 3. FAQs about Videos Won't Play on iPhone