Uploading times vary depending on your file size, internet bandwidth, and upload traffic. Uploading can take anywhere from a few moments to several hours. If your upload seems stuck or is taking a long time, it may be due to:
- File type and size: Your video’s file type and video format determine its size. To make your uploads faster, use screen recordings instead of webcam recordings, and keep your videos short.
- Slow internet connection: Run a speed test (https://www.speedtest.net/) to check your internet connection. Slow or unstable internet connection is one of the main causes of slow uploads.
- Heavy uploads traffic: You might be uploading during a busy time. At some peak hours, your Internet Service Provider registers spikes of upload traffic and might take longer to upload your video.
If you’re experiencing any of these issues, we recommend that you let your video finish uploading to your teacher's Google Drive.
What is considered slow internet?
With speeds less than 25 Mbps, you may experience issues buffering when streaming video, difficulty connecting multiple devices, and other internet connectivity issues. To give you an idea of how much speed can play a role in uploading, we’ve listed the estimated time it would take to upload a 10-minute video with various speeds below.
| 1 Mbps | 4 hours, 22 minutes |
| 3 Mbps | 1 hour, 26 minutes |
| 5 Mbps | 53 minutes |
| 10 Mbps | 26 minutes |
| 30 Mbps | 8 minutes, 41 seconds |
| 50 Mbps | 5 minutes, 11 seconds |
| 100 Mbps | 2 minutes, 30 seconds |
| 500 Mbps | 30 seconds |
If you have slow upload speeds
- Try using a wired connection. If you’re currently using a Wi-Fi connection, try switching to an ethernet cable, as wired connections have a faster upload speed.
- Clear your temporary files. Clearing your history, cache, and cookies can increase the overall speed of your computer, and this will increase your upload speed in turn.
- Remove other devices from your network. Having many devices connected to your internet at once can really slow down speeds, so try removing these. This can include wireless printers and mobile phones too.
- Remove malware. Malware is one of the things that can slow your computer’s speed down most, so you should make sure you don’t have any viruses. You can do this by downloading antivirus software and by making sure that it’s working properly.
- Upload at off-peak times. This one isn’t particularly helpful if you need to upload quickly now, but off-peak times have much quicker speeds, and this is something to consider when choosing the time you upload something.
Additional Options to Try
- Which version of Chrome are you running? Try updating to the newest version (see below)
- Are 3rd-party cookies blocked? Try unblocking them (see below)
- Can you clear your browser app cache and cookies? Go to chrome://settings/clearBrowserData and click "Clear data"
How to find which version of Google Chrome you have
- Navigate to chrome://settings/help
- The version of your Google Chrome browser will appear on the next window, toward the top of the screen.
If students are not using Chrome Version 72 or greater
- On your computer, open Chrome.
- At the top right, click More (three dots menu)
- Click Update Google Chrome.
- Click Relaunch.
Please see this page for the number of the latest version of Chrome.
If 3rd-party cookies are blocked
- Navigate to chrome://settings/content/
cookies - Turn off "Block third-party cookies"
