I’ve been doing some uploading to YouTube lately, and because my Internet connection is presently somewhat terrible1, I have found need to slow down my video uploads. There is no obvious way to do that in the YouTube interface, but it turns out you can do it easily in Google Chrome.
To slow down any web page, YouTube included, open up the Developer Tools sidebar in your Chrome browser by going to the three dots menu at the far right of the menu bar, selecting More tools and then Developer tools. From there, pull down the three dots menu in the Developer Tools pane and, confusingly, select More tools again followed by Network conditions. This will open up a small sub-pane with a dropdown labeled “Network throttling”.
This dropdown is intended to simulate connecting over less-than-ideal network connections, but it can also be used to cap utilization to something below your own less-than-ideal network connection. Drop down the list of throttling options, select Add in the Custom section, and create a connection with limits somewhat less than your Internet service — something like 1/2 to 2/3 your provider rate should be good. In my case, upload is the problem, so I set the download rate very high and the upload rate to about 1/2 my provisioned upload.
Now, when you need to throttle a page, open Developer Tools and the Network conditions panel and select your custom configuration for Network throttling. It will take a few moments to take effect for established connections, but it should make your concurrent browsing experience much better.
1 Because it's the only broadband provider I can get at my current location, I pay too much money for too poor a connection from Time Warner Cable. I realize they don't technically exist any more, but that's what my bill says. The upload is only 1.25 Mbps, which might as well be dialup, and I am paying nearly $40/month for the privilege. Sheesh.