December 11, 2008 by Vincent

Watch YouTube in High Quality All The Time [&fmt=18]

It is no longer a secret that we can watch certain YouTube videos in high definition now, let alone high quality which had been rolled out for quite some time already. All you have to do is to click on the small blue link under a YouTube video that reads “watch in high quality” or “watch in HD“.

But little you know (well, probably) that it is also possible to watch a YouTube video in high quality even when the “watch in high quality/HD” link is not available. All you have to do is just simply add “&fmt=18” at the back of a YouTube video URL.

For example, instead of

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HPfAhA2FBU,

Add “&fmt=18” at the back of the URL, and go to this URL instead:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HPfAhA2FBU&fmt=18

This is the typical low quality video we used to watch:

The improved version, after adding the “&fmt=18” string.

If you are on Firefox and have Greasemonkey add-on installed, you can make use of the YouTube HD userscript to automatically add the “&fmt=18” string to all videos you watch on YouTube, making watching high quality videos effortless.

This trick works on most YouTube videos, but not all. I have tested it on the RickRoll video, and it doesn’t work. Please do also note that higher quality meaning more bandwidth will be required, so forget about it if you are on a very slow internet connection.

You might want to know how to embed YouTube video in high quality too.

#Greasemonkey#HD#YouTube