In an attempt to ensure that the sudden increase in Internet traffic didn't cause any issues with its infrastructure, YouTube in India restricted video streaming quality on its mobile apps to 480p earlier this year in March. Since then, YouTube users in India have had to bear with pixelated streams on mobile devices while the rest of the world could enjoy the same videos at higher resolutions. As a result, Indian users were forced to look for workarounds like browsing YouTube via Chrome on mobile, using unofficial apps like NewPipe, or watching videos on desktop. Now, over three months since the restrictions first came into effect, YouTube is finally re-enabling 1080p streaming in India.

The YouTube app on Android and iOS now lets you switch to 1080p quality if you're connected to a WiFi network. The change seems to have been enabled via a server-side switch and doesn't require you to update the YouTube app. However, the default streaming quality is still set at 480p. In case you wish you watch videos in 1080p on mobile, all you need to do is connect your device to a WiFi network, tap on the three-dot menu button in the top right corner of the video, and then select 1080p from the quality settings.

In case you don't have access to a stable WiFi connection and you wish to stream at 1080p on mobile data, there's a simple workaround. But for it to work, you'll still need to have access to a temporary WiFi connection. To stream videos at 1080p on mobile data, you'll need to connect your device to WiFi and then open a video on YouTube. You can then disconnect your device from the WiFi network and switch to 1080p quality as mentioned above. The video should stream at 1080p on mobile data without any issues. Do note that 1080p streaming, and the aforementioned workaround, don't seem to work with mobile hotspots.