How do I watch a YouTube playlist at the same quality for every video automatically?

Question

I want to watch an entire YouTube playlist at full screen. The playlist consists of nine videos and every video's quality can be chosen from 240p all the way to 1080p. I want to view the playlist at 720p, but every time I choose it while watching one video it reverts back to 1080p when it switches to the next video, though in my "Settings" I have "always play at HD" unchecked. I want to play it at 720p because my internet connection can never play 1080p properly.

Is there a way to watch the playlist at a constant quality throughout?

Environment: Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8.

Answer 1

I finally found a solution. It works in Google Chrome only and it requires two extensions.

Install the extensions Remove Scrollbars YouTube Options

Set Youtube Options to the fellowing settings:

Play a playlist in YouTube and go to the browser fullscreen mode by hitting the keyboard F11 button. This is important!
The transition of the video's are not fluently, but it stays fullscreen.

Answer 2

There aren't a lot of options for you on this one, but check out Youtube's Playback Setup page (you'll need to be logged in). This will allow you to unselect the option for always playing the highest quality video according to your player size.

This is the setting that changes your video quality selection with each video load (it's video specific, not channel/playlist specific).

Answer 3

There are Firefox add-ons that would allow you to do this:

1. YouTube Video Quality Manager. An icon appears on the add-ons/status bar. Just right-click and choose the video quality you want.

2. There is also SmartVideo for YouTube, which I prefer. It has more options, like forced buffering of videos, stop YouTube from changing the quality of the video when you want to see it full screen, or even to stop or start the video once you click on the link or when to play if X percent of video has already been buffered.

Answer 4

You can use: Improve YouTube! (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Safari) — an open-source browser extension that can tweak YouTube in various ways, such as automatically setting a preferred, default video quality/resolution on all YouTube videos you watch.

After installing Improve YouTube!, click the extension’s button → Player → Quality and choose a resolution/quality. This will configure it to play videos in the chosen resolution/quality by default. Settings screenshot:

^{Declaration of non-affiliation: I have NO AFFILIATION with the “Improve YouTube!” browser extension in any way whatsoever. I’m just a regular user who wanted to share a solution to the OP’s question. I found this extension to be a relevant and helpful solution because it allows users to set a default quality/resolution for YouTube videos they watch.}