Hi Florian & Team - I host a weekly watch party in the U.S., with 10-20 users each week, and without fail, every week the same U.S. user (who uses an iPad to view and screencasts to their TV) has about half of their videos play in a non-English language; no other users experience this problem. I had the user check the W2G language control (the A-Z button), and it was defaulted to English. I had the user check their default YouTube language settings, which was defaulted to English. In searching the W2G forums, I saw the workaround option of having the user activate their native controls in the W2G settings, in order to select the audio track, and had the user try that. However, when the user selects the YouTube native controls gear within the viewing window, the menu that pops-up does not have audio track as a visible option, yet it does have that option when viewing the same video directly in YouTube. The user is incredibly frustrated, and Iāve tried everything that I can find to try to help them. Any ideas with your expertise? As always, thank you for all you do, Florian & team!
Hi Jim, thanks for your feedback! The original language of the video is English and then it gets translated to a random non-english language? Can you provide a link to one of the videos where this happens?
Florian
Hi Florian - yes, it happened this past Wednesday with the following YouTube video, which has English as the original, but played in Spanish the whole time for the User while in W2G (even after closing browser and re-entering several times), but played in English on YouTube every time. The foreign languages are random each week for this User (Spanish, French, Chinese, to name a few).
Thanks for looking into it! -Jim
Hi Jim,
Thanks for the link. Iāve just tried it, and the video played in English on all my test devices. There are two things you can try:
I noticed that on smaller screens, the option to change the language within YouTubeās player can be hidden in the settings dialogue. You have to scroll down in that dialogue box to see and change it.
Is the user in question using some kind of VPN software on the device? Disabling this could help to avoid any weird language auto-selection by YouTube.
Please let me know if this helps!
Florian
Hi Florian - thanks for your patience, as I waited for this weekās Watch Party. It happened again this week to the same user (Chinese and Spanish instead of English), so I did a FaceTime with the user to see for myself and try a few things. The user is watching the watch party on an iPad. He already had Native Controls added (checked) in the W2G settings menu, so I made sure those were selected during the video, made sure his selected language in W2G was English, and he opened the Native settings (gear) within the player window itself. He scrolled down on the YouTube pop-up box, and there was no audio/language option. He selected the additional options in the pop-up window and scrolled down, and it was not there either (I tested this on my own iPhone and found it is not there as an option on my iPhone either, but it was an option on my laptop doing the same steps). I also had him check the VPN setting on his iPad, and it was toggled off (āNot Connectedā). However, he told me that each week he will screencast from his iPad to his AppleTV to watch the party on his television. Is it possible that the iPad to AppleTV cast is creating some sort of connection or tunnel that is simulating a VPN-like issue? I am not a tech guru, and that might be a stupid question, but thought I would mention it. Any other ideas for his iPad (other than having him watch on another device, which I had him do tonight through his iPhoneā¦with no issues, by the way)? Thanks for all you do!
P.S. The past two weeks, I have been getting several disconnects in the middle of my watch party using the W2G Chrome plug-in, with an endless buffering circle spinning. Iāve switched to my Edge browser and resumed, which has been very stable. Not sure if there is a plug-in issue or I need to uninstall/reinstall or update. Thanks for your advice on this too! -Jim
Hi Jim,
Thanks for the follow-up. Iāll run some tests on an iPad to see if I can reproduce the issue.
Regarding the ābuffering circle spinningā, does that mean that the entire room is not loading? Or is it just the video playing in the room?
Florian
Thank you!
The room loaded fine, and users were still able to watch the video playlist continuing to play, even though I showed as disconnected on my end as the host, and my screen was buffering, saying to reload. I texted a user while this was happening, who said the video was still playing normally for them. When I did reload/refresh as the host to clear the buffering (spinning wheel), it restarted the video for everyone in the room m, who then re-synced with me, and I had to fast-forward to where I last saw we were at in the video.
Thanks for clarifying! It sounds like you were disconnected from the room itself. Did this happen last night?
Yes, last night, Wednesday (4/23/2026), between 18:46 and 19:00 Pacific Time.
Thanks for the details! I assume there were no issues with your internet connection at that time?
Correct, no internet issues. I had a second open window and was actively revising a document on OneDrive, and did not get a broken connection issue. My internet connection showed I still had two way connection, which I checked when it was spinning.
Iām just checking back on this. Is your group still experiencing this issue?
Hi Florian - last Wednesday, April 29, I did not hear of any issues regarding the non-English audio track from the one user having problems, nor did I experience any connection issues on my laptop using the browser (as opposed to the W2G plug-in). We did not hold a Watch Party tonight, May 6, so I will need to wait until next Wednesday, May 13, to determine if any of the issues persist or are resolved. Thanks for checking in!
Alright, thanks! Let me know if you find any other issues.