YouTube users are running into a particularly annoying bug that’s making their viewing experience grind to a halt. An advertisement for an app called “AR Drawing” by Hypernova Limited keeps popping up and refusing to load, forcing people to close out of their videos entirely and reopen them just to keep watching.
The complaints started rolling in over the past day, with frustrated viewers taking to Reddit to vent about the issue. The same broken ad keeps appearing throughout viewing sessions, sometimes showing up every few minutes according to affected users. When it does appear, the ad just sits there buffering indefinitely instead of playing or skipping, effectively holding the video hostage until the user manually exits and returns.
One user described getting hit with the glitched ad “multiple times today” and having to repeatedly leave videos and come back to trigger a different advertisement.
Another person mentioned the ad appears “at least every other ad break,” turning what should be a simple viewing session into a constant cycle of closing and reopening videos. The workaround is simple enough but gets old fast when you’re trying to binge your favorite content or follow along with a tutorial.
The AR Drawing app itself appears to be in development, with the ad promoting it as an early access opportunity where users can “be one of the first to try it and provide feedback.” The app promises features like easy drawing with AR camera technology and access to template collections. But right now, the only feedback it’s generating involves how badly its advertisement is breaking the YouTube experience.
You can check out additional reports here, here, here, and here.
Based on the reports and screenshots shared, this appears to be affecting Android users specifically. The problem seems isolated to this particular advertisement rather than being a broader issue with YouTube’s ad delivery system.
Some users have tried clearing their cache and restarting their phones, but those standard troubleshooting steps haven’t resolved the problem.
YouTube hasn’t publicly acknowledged the issue yet, though problems like this typically get resolved once enough reports come in and the platform can identify the problematic ad and pull it from rotation. Until then, affected users are stuck with the tedious workaround of closing and reopening their videos whenever the broken ad decides to make an appearance.
Dwayne Cubbins
1775 Posts
My fascination with Android phones began the moment I got my hands on one. Since then, I've been on a journey to decode the ever-evolving tech landscape, fueled by a passion for both the "how" and the "why." Since 2018, I've been crafting content that empowers users and demystifies the tech world. From in-depth how-to guides that unlock your phone's potential to breaking news based on original research, I strive to make tech accessible and engaging.