The two things an address has to satisfy

Both conditions, or no result

Reading a page for video comes down to two questions asked in order. Does this page publish a media file? Can this page be read without signing in as somebody?

An address that answers yes twice produces a results list. An address that answers no to either one produces an empty list, and the empty list is the correct answer rather than a fault. Knowing which of the two failed tells you whether a different address helps or whether nothing will.

The first condition: a media file is published on the page

Publishing means the page hands a real video file to an ordinary visitor's browser so that it can be played. That file has an address of its own, a size, and an encoding, and those three facts are what the results list reports.

Most video pages qualify without anything special. A post with a clip in it, an episode page on a video host, an article with a player embedded, a direct address to a stored file: each of these puts a real file within reach of a browser, and therefore within reach of a reader acting like one.

How the first condition fails

It fails when the address names something that is not one video. A homepage, a search result, a channel, a profile, a playlist, and a tag page all list videos rather than carrying one, so there is no single file to report.

It also fails when the page is genuinely not video. A page whose media is a photograph gives back an image, not a clip. A broadcast that is still running has no finished file yet, because the recording does not exist until the broadcast ends. And a page whose player is licensed streaming hands out a protected stream rather than a published file.

• Addresses that name a collection rather than an item.
• Pages whose media is an image rather than a video.
• Broadcasts in progress, where no finished recording exists.
• Licensed catalogues that never publish a plain file.

The second condition: the page opens without an account

Reading happens from our servers, and those servers arrive at the page as a visitor with no history, no account, and no membership. What a page shows to that visitor is all there is to work with.

This is why the test that settles most arguments is a private window. Open the address in a private or incognito window on your own device, where you are signed in to nothing. What you see there is very close to what our reader sees.

How the second condition fails

It fails wherever the page serves something other than the video to a stranger. A sign-in form, a members-only notice, an age gate that requires an account, or a subscription wall each occupy the space the video would have filled.

Two further cases behave the same way. A post set to followers only is invisible to anyone the owner has not approved. A title licensed for some countries and not others serves a regional notice instead. In every one of these the address is spelled correctly and the video exists; the page simply does not publish it to an unidentified visitor, and no downloader gets past that.

Telling the two failures apart from an empty list

Read the address first. If the last meaningful word in the path is channel, user, profile, playlist, search, tag, or explore, the first condition failed, and the repair is to open one video from that collection and copy its own address.

If the address names a single item and the list is still empty, open it in a private window. A video that plays there points at something else entirely, so try copying the address again from the page rather than from a message. A sign-in form, a wall, or a regional notice in that window confirms the second condition failed, and there is no address that fixes it.

Related pages

• Pages that hold no single video
• Which kinds of website can be read
• Testing an address in a private window first
• Video sitting on a page that is not a video site