How To Fix Peacock TV When It Keeps Freezing

The Peacock TV app is your route to some of the best TV shows ever produced. “The Office,” “Downton Abbey,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” and even the entirety of the former WWE Network all call Peacock their home. Hours of great TV await, assuming you can get the app working the way it should.

Freezing and buffering issues are common for many Peacock users. Every stutter and stop in your show ruins the carefully crafted television experience, which means you need to find a solution. This article presents several fixes for the problem of Peacock TV freezing.

Solution 1 – Check Your Internet Connection

Peacock’s internet requirements aren’t particularly extravagant, with the app requiring a connection of 3 Mbps for standard streaming. Live events and ultra-HD streaming need at least 8 Mbps. Still, it’s possible that your internet connection is to blame for the constant freezing and stuttering you experience.

Checking your internet connection may reveal that the Peacock app isn’t the problem, so follow these steps to check and potentially solve the issue:

1. Using a device that’s connected to the same network as the device that’s running the Peacock app, run an internet speed check using a service like Speedtest by Ookla.
   
2. If your connection is less than Peacock’s requirements, try disconnecting some of the devices that are currently using your Wi-Fi. Run another speed test to see if the speeds improve.
   

If you see no improvement after removing several devices from your Wi-Fi network, there’s likely a problem on your Internet Service Provider’s (ISP’s) end. Get in touch with your ISP’s customer service team to query the issue.

Solution 2 – Reset Your Router

Your router is like the engine room for your home’s Wi-Fi connection. If that engine room starts to malfunction, it gets harder for devices to stay connected to your internet. The good news is that a quick reset is often the way to solve niggling router-based issues:

1. Turn off your router, either using the pin reset built into some devices or unplugging it from its power socket.
   
2. Wait for at least 30 seconds.
   
3. Turn your router back on and wait for it to reboot.
   
4. Reconnect to your Wi-Fi connection and try Peacock again.

This reset allows you to both power cycle your router (ridding it of excess electricity) and creates a fresh connection with your ISP’s servers. Hopefully, that combination of power cycling and a new connection gives you the bandwidth needed to keep the Peacock app running.

Solution 3 – Manually Restart the App

A problem with the app itself could cause freezing, with glitches, bugs, and similar problems all occasionally forcing you to manually restart Peacock. By restarting, you “refresh” the app, giving it a chance to restart all of its processes, essentially wiping the slate clean for Peacock to try again.

The process for manually restarting varies depending on your device. For example, those using iPhones to watch Peacock can do the following:

1. Head to “Apps.”
   
2. Select the Peacock app from the list and tap “Force Stop.”
   
3. Hit “OK” in the dialog box and the app should close.
   
4. Restart Peacock to see if it runs better than it did before.

Again, the exact process varies depending on your device, though most should let you manually stop and restart your Peacock app.

Solution 4 – Restart Your Device

Sometimes, the problem that’s affecting your Peacock app doesn’t lie with either the app or your internet connection. Your device may be to blame. As any good IT tech will tell you, a simple restart is often enough to fix issues with the software you’re using.

Before the restart, try shutting down any programs or apps you have running in the background of your device. An overload of other apps could cause Peacock to have to fight for device resources, with canceling out of those other apps potentially freeing those resources up for Peacock to use.

If that doesn’t solve your Peacock freezing issues, restarting your device is like creating a blank slate onto which you add Peacock as the first and only app that’s running after the restart.

Solution 5 – Check the Peacock Servers

Peacock streams from off-site servers located throughout the United States. Sometimes, a problem with the server your instance of the app accesses could be the reason why Peacock keeps freezing.

Follow these steps to check how Peacock is doing on the server side:

1. Head to Down Detector and click or tap on the magnifying glass icon.
   
2. Type “Peacock” into the search bar and hit “Enter.”
   
3. Check the chart to see if other users have reported Peacock outages.
   

If the chart shows that hundreds (or even thousands) of people have reported issues at the same time you experienced them, you can surmise that there’s a problem with the servers. Sadly, waiting for that problem to get fixed is usually your only solution.

Solution 6 – Sign Out and Back in Again

Often, the simplest solutions work wonders. Signing out of the Peacock app is much like conducting a manual restart because signing back in creates a fresh instance of the app. If a bug or glitch caused your freezing or stuttering issues, this simple solution “resets” the app so it can try to run properly again.

Signing out is simple:

1. Navigate to “Account,” which you should see in the upper-right corner of your screen.
   
2. Select “Sign Out.”
   
3. Close the app and reopen it, logging back in when prompted.

This solution may not work if the app freezes so badly that it crashes and you can’t access the sign-out option. In that case, a manual restart via force-stopping the app may be your only recourse.

Solution 7 – Update the Peacock App

If you have an out-of-date version of the Peacock app running on your device, you may find that it struggles to connect to Peacock’s servers, leading to your freezing issues. Updating the app may solve that problem. Plus, you benefit from getting the latest version of the app (with the user interface and security upgrades that may bring), making updating a win-win situation.

The method you use to update depends on your device, though most offer the option to search for an update via the app store you use to download Peacock. Other devices, such as Amazon’s Fire Stick, allow you to update via the device itself:

1. Highlight the Peacock app and press the “Menu” button on your remote.
   
2. Head to “Manage,” then “More Info.”
   
3. Click “Update.”
   

The Fire Stick then manually searches for an update, followed by either running the update or letting you know that your app is up-to-date. Again, these steps vary depending on your device.

Solution 8 – Delete and Reinstall the App

As your “hail Mary” throw, deleting the Peacock app wipes most of the data it’s stored on your device, along with the app itself. Reinstalling creates a fresh version of the app (and one that’s completely updated) so you can try again.

Note that deleting Peacock means that you won’t be signed in when you reinstall. Make a note of your username and password so you can get back in once you have the app up and running again.

Break Through the Peacock Freeze

App instability is always annoying, especially when you’re absorbed in a show only for a freeze or buffering icon to get in the way of your enjoyment. The fixes described help if there’s a problem with your device, your internet connection, or with the Peacock app itself, at least helping you get to the root of the problem.

How often do you find that the app freezes up on you when you’re trying to watch a show? What shows drew you to Peacock in the first place and would you recommend them to others? Let us know in the comments section below.