The VideoLAN Forums

I copied a YouTube URL and pasted it into VLC's Open Network Stream input field. The play button opens for a second but the video doesn't play. I've tried with a dozen different URLs. None will play.

VLC on iOS and tvOS does not support playback of YouTube URLs and won't do so for the foreseeable future. The technical reason for this is that VLC's lua extension support was not ported to these platforms yet and for parsing YouTube URLs, lua is currently required.

Thanks for the reply and explanation. Can you recommend an alternative media player that can play videos at 1.X speed?

Sorry, I'm not aware of any competing app offering that feature.

As a work-around, you can of course download videos from YouTube and play those with VLC.

Can I download the videos in iOS, or do I need to do that on a computer?

If I remember correctly, Apple prohibits YouTube Downloader apps on their store now, so I fear that you'll need to use some sort of computer.