YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

https://piunikaweb.com/2026/01/28/youtube-background-play-samsung-internet-brave/

by croes • 6 months ago

204 199 6 months ago

piunikaweb.com

idrissbellil• 6 months ago

still works for me

Banditoz• 6 months ago

Not for long, probably.

I've noticed YouTube likes to A/B test a lot. If you use it signed out you pretty much get a new set of minor changes each time.

gethly• 6 months ago

I've noticed yesterday before and after update. So annoying. I so fucking hate Google and what they've become.

poulpy123• 6 months ago

Fuck google

jsilence• 6 months ago

This is so annoying.

Along the same line is that you can watch any hour long video without interruptions unless it is music where you will get interrupted every couple of minutes with "are you there?" dialogues.

computerfriend• 6 months ago

YouTube NonStop: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-nonst....

keyle• 6 months ago

If this may help you, some browser allow youtube videos in PIP (e.g. Orion). That keeps the video going, you can scale it down in a corner.

Otherwise the other option is to drag the tab out to a window of its own, they can't know it's not visible, at least that works for Twitch ads.

politelemon• 6 months ago

Newpipe remains one of the best solutions for background playback. They do tend to move pretty quickly to patch "fixes" that YouTube throw in now and again. It's also useful for video backups if you need to preserve them for any reason.

Pooge2• 6 months ago

yt-dlp is great if on desktop.

deafpolygon2• 6 months ago

I do this, then send it to VLC on mobile.

manwithaplan• 6 months ago

It works perfectly fine under Termux, too.

Erenay09• 6 months ago

I am using Tubular, a NewPipe fork that has built-in SponsorBlock and ReturnYouTubeDislike features.

stevenhuang• 6 months ago

Tubular is great. Though they sometimes take a while to fix playback issues, like the one where videos only played for 10 seconds. That caused a bunch of forks to come out and I used those for a period of time.

Lately I discovered Firefox with background play and sponsor block extensions still work. If this stops working hopefully tubular will be a good backup.

happymellon• 6 months ago

Why install additional software? Firefox hasn't broken for me only the Chrome clones.

Pooge2• 6 months ago

Because modern websites are unusable on mobile; it's a feature and not a bug.

mhitza• 6 months ago

I'm a NewPipe user as well, unfortunately the experience is getting worse there too. Might be because I also use a VPN, but after every couple of videos I have to cooldown my usage until the IP block is reset.

This started happening for me a few weeks ago.

scns• 6 months ago

It's also useful for video backups if you need to preserve them for any reason.

You can download only the soundpart as mp4 or opus too.

keepamovin9• 6 months ago

I released a browserbox variant many years ago that could ensure background playback on YouTube. Despite multiple posts here and on PH, it never gained any traction. It seemed people were simply not interested in overcoming no background playback for free on every platform (including mobile).

Same time, one can appreciate the YouTube business: once you give something away for free, people absolutely loose their fucking minds if you make it paid. Once you set the bar to zero for payment, people will murder in the streets and despise you if you reasonably charge for what could have been a paid product all along. So there's a psychological blocker to switching on payment that people are ready to go to war for. It's the same blocker that cripples "open source" sustainability. People quickly develop an entitlement-callous, and feel cheated if you require payment instead of just continuing to surrender value to them.

It reminds of how a group of primates will kill a handler who gives cake to one, but not the group. This "free / paid" tension triggers some kind of deep-rooted human fairness wiring that is really tricky to extinguish once activated. That's why you should never open source your code and never give stuff away for free, if you plan to posslby make money from it somehow or make it paid in future. Because if you ever withhold the siphon of value related to ads or other 'you as a product' models, they will launch a jihad against you.

I think it's interesting how the human fairness reflex, often correct, breaks down in the context of "provider / consumer" dynamics. Even if the provider is not some "evil mega corp" but simply a solo software creator, people will still feel you are attempting to rob them of all dignity and debase their honor if you require payment for what was previously gratis.

Oh well. Live and learn, YouTube.

learingsci7• 6 months ago

It’s called “opportunity cost.”

If you marry somebody and they suddenly become a totally different person and try to extort you a common reaction is to feel deceived and unhappy. They have cheated you in a sense of the opportunity cost of being able to marry someone else.

That people might not understand that tells you something about them.

stavros8• 6 months ago

The issue isn't with the payment, it's that you've burnt a ton of money to extinguish all competition (by giving away stuff for free) and then, when you're a monopoly because of network effects, you lock it in and charge whatever you want.

If YouTube allowed syndication with other websites, for example, so I could watch videos on whatever website I wanted (with an appropriate portion of the revenue going to YouTube), I would have no problems with them changing their monetization model.

GvS• 6 months ago

I recommend PipePipe: https://github.com/InfinityLoop1308/PipePipe

LoveMortuus2• 6 months ago

For me it's Grayjay, NewPipe doesn't want to load videos whenever I try it, but Grayjay has been the most reliable out of any alternatives that I've tried.

hsbauauvhabzb3• 6 months ago

Imagine trying to take a basic browser function we’ve all taken for granted for decades and attempt to paywall it as ‘Background playback is a feature intended to be exclusive for YouTube Premium members.’

Get fucked. I vote we remove API access to any focus state information.

Fuck you google.

laserlight3• 6 months ago

It upsets me to see YouTube Premium apologists despite all the hostile moves by YouTube. YouTube Premium is an extortion scheme. When there are enough paying customers, YouTube Premium will begin showing ads to them. They won't forget sugarcoating ads as being “unobtrusive” or “environment-supporting” or whatever. But guess what? If you don't want to see them, you can upgrade to YouTube Premium Plus and continue being an apologist.

wiseowise• 6 months ago

But think how hard it is for them to earn money to make up for all the billions they’ve used to create de facto monopoly in video space? Won’t someone think of poor capitalists trying to squeeze the niche dry?

mschuster912• 6 months ago

YouTube Premium is an extortion scheme.

One might also say it was unsustainable from the start, video is incredibly expensive to host and especially moderate.

All we're seeing right now is the beginning of the end of the ad-financed world. Someone has to pay the bills in the end and advertisement spending is on the way down, more and more of it is going to influencers/TTL instead of traditional ATL/BTL marketing.

slig• 6 months ago

When there are enough paying customers, YouTube Premium will begin showing ads to them.

We'll see. Until then, it's cheap and works fine.

aembleton3• 6 months ago

Imagine trying to take a basic browser function we’ve all taken for granted for decades

What basic browser function is that? Video playback with the video tag? It's only been around for about 15 years and mainstream for 10 years.

antisol• 6 months ago

This is disingenuous - we were all watching flash video for about a decade before that. And before that we were watching (terrible ~160x120) video in realvideo* or asf format using browser plugins, since maybe 1997-1998, certainly before 2000.

* tangiential rambling old-person side-note: RealPlayer was a weird early example of a piece of software that was actually _better_ on Linux: The windoze version was notorious for also installing a thousand other pieces of spyware/adware and other trash, taking over your system and making it worse, to the point that people avoided it like the plague... But none of that crapware supported Linux, so the Linux version was just this relatively clean player that came as a self-contained, easy to install rpm and worked pretty well. I used to use RealPlayer a fair bit back in my early Linux days. When I used to tie an onion my belt, which was the style at the time.

xnx• 6 months ago

This will be a positive if browsers (extensions?) allow the ability to spoof visibility by site. Most websites have no business knowing if they're in the foreground or background.

touwer• 6 months ago

That's actually quite easy. onBlur, etc

reddalo6• 6 months ago

Just to be precise, onBlur is a JavaScript event for an item that loses its focus, visibilitychange is what you actually need to detect tab changing.

madeofpalk• 6 months ago

Nice - you’ve just increased significantly power consumption of your browser!

Browsers will “slow down” various aspects of pages when they’re not visible, like animations or timers, to save on battery usage on laptops or phones.

Even if your remove explicit APIs for backgrounding, pages can still use heuristics to detect anyway.

chii• 6 months ago

The user should be making the choice - not the website. The website could be informed about being backgrounded, if the user chooses to. But the user should have the priority in the decision chain - their choice overrides any that the website makes.

That is what it means to have control over your own computing.

RandomTeaParty• 6 months ago

I mean... What's wrong with youtube tab consuming power "as if it's on screen" if it plays video?

As an avid idle game player, I'm tired of opening games in different window and having main window not-fullscreen just for the game to play normally

This "tab unloading" is great and all, but not giving us users any control to turn it off is awful

Cytobit• 6 months ago

I could save even more power if I turn my computer off. I don't mind using power to use my computer.

doe88• 6 months ago

There must be reaching a state where there must have more code for blocking all the stuffs there are trying to block than displaying videos. No wonder its UI feels bloated.

deafpolygon2• 6 months ago

This is precisely why I don’t use YT anymore. On top of these scummy behaviour on Alphabets part… the content has taken a deep dive because more and more people are creating it for the “algorithm” and less for the content.

barnabee2• 6 months ago

Background playback is a feature of the browser and operating system, not YouTube.

Consumer laws should prevent Google doing this. We need an anti-DMCA to make circumvention, bypassing, or disabling of user’s device or OS features illegal.

lmz• 6 months ago

Serving requests is a feature of Youtube and if they don't want to serve your client... well you didn't pay for it anyway.

VadimPR• 6 months ago

They corned the market, drove everyone out of it, and are now rent-seeking. Can't say you have much of a choice between youtube and any other video provider that has the same content on it.

esperent• 6 months ago

The equivalent here is if Sony owned the most watched TV network (by far) and decided that it would work fully on Sony Bravia tvs. People with LG or Samsung TV's could only watch a degraded version.

homebrewer• 6 months ago

We all pay plenty. Don't forget that every product you buy that advertises on YouTube forwards some of that money to YouTube, even if you then don't watch the ads. I would be happy to pay the same amount for everything, but somehow block vendors from spending any money on ads, if it were at all possible.

ThatMedicIsASpy• 6 months ago

They removed the UI option to find newest videos first yesterday.

deaux4• 6 months ago

No, we need the laws already on the books to be enforced and Google to be broken up. And Meta. And Microsoft. And Amazon.

raydev2• 6 months ago

Consumer laws should regulate free content delivery?

barnabee2• 6 months ago

Yes, they should regulate any product or service offered by profit making companies to consumers, regardless of whether they are provided “free” of charge or not.

redml• 6 months ago

i had that happen on firefox mobile months ago and installed video background play fix which all it does is stop sending the js hooks for when tab/window focus is lost. it was something clearly targeted to mobile browsers for people like me who don't bother with official apps anymore as they're riddled with antipatterns and ads. you can just youtube to the homepage like it's an app anyway.

Imustaskforhelp• 6 months ago

+N for video background play fix extension. Highly recommended on firefox.

This and ubo on android really make firefox a really great (the best imo) browser on android.

sfdlkj3jk342a• 6 months ago

Still working on IronFox (Firefox fork) on Android with the Video Background Fix extension.

kurito• 6 months ago

What a waste of resources. Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet and allocating man-hours towards artificially worsening the experience for your userbase in order to blackmail them into paying you, and giving them back what they had in the first place.

At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side behaviour.

Ampersander• 6 months ago

Aren't they going to win in the long run with remote attestation?

nikanj4• 6 months ago

*Allocating man-hours towards making sure that users actually pay for the service they're using, either via youtube subscription or ads

saagarjha• 6 months ago

Monetizing a basic OS feature is not a good look.

realusername• 6 months ago

Maybe if the Youtube subscription wasn't 10x what they earn from a single user with ads, that would be more believable option.

BrenBarn• 6 months ago

If they wanted users to pay for the service they're using they should never have made YouTube free in the first place.

anonymous9082133• 6 months ago

Google is the richest company literally on the entire planet, you really don't need to go to bat for monopolistic practices.

tjpnz2• 6 months ago

No worse than what a lot of their other "brilliant" minds are working on - ads.

throwaway132448• 6 months ago

Whataboutism is just fascinating. How myopic must your world view be that when you see one bad thing, you immediately try to justify it by pointing out another bad thing?

jy148982• 6 months ago

While I'm not pro YouTube, I think it's fine for companies to decide how to monetise their product, including things which were originally free. If you don't like free services, stop using them

reddalo6• 6 months ago

If you don't like free services, stop using them

Problem is, there's no real alternative for YouTube. It's a monopoly.

tjpnz2• 6 months ago

Is this product or hampering the way the web works with video? Go to any other site with a <video> tag and you won't face similar issues.

rockskon• 6 months ago

If a company wants to offer its service as a loss-leader to outlast its competitors who offered their services at a cost its users were willing to pay, then that company has no room to complain if people don't want to pay the last-game-in-town's jacked-up rates!

There is no moral high-ground for YouTube to take here.

sidrag222• 6 months ago

If you don't like free services, stop using them

If they don't like users using their service how they deem improper, ban them? they know what accounts are doing it... There is a reason for this cat and mouse, and its not ending with youtube banning people.

A lot of the current issues i see with it, is that it is treated like the go to service for video hosting...

Just consider image hosting... If i see an image in a thread and click it (much like people will do with youtube urls), and block the ad that was on the hosted site, is there this much uproar about it? That image hosting site might charge 5$ to do what an adblocker already does... If they wanna lock that up? actually lock it up, and remove the "service" portion of the business, otherwise I don't see any legs to stand on here.

Service in my eyes here, is a public service. This is a company posing as a public service, and occasionally deciding it hates how a % of the public is using their service. So they hand them a 10$ a month ticket that they pretend is required, but they will never take action on users who dont pay that ticket.

deaux4• 6 months ago

As soon as the laws on the books get enforced and they get broken up, sure. Until then, absolutely not.

zigzag312• 6 months ago

including things which were originally free

Oh, I despise this tactic so much. It means the company has known from the start that they can't offer it for free in the long term, but decided to subsidize it in order to gain a dominant position and get rid of competition. This breaks the conditions needed for a free market dynamics to work. In other words, they win market share for reasons other than efficiency, quality, or innovation. That's why some forms of government subsidies are prohibited under certain agreements, for example. Some multinational corporations have annual revenues larger than the GDP of many countries and can easily subsidize negative pricing for years to undercut competitors, consolidate market share, and ultimately gain monopoly power.

Also, the company has hinted false promises to the customer, as it signals that they have developed a business model where they can offer something for free. For example a two-sided marketplace where one side gets something for free to attract users and the other side pays (as it profits form these users). Users can't know something isn't sustainable unless the company explicitly states it in some way (e.g. this is a limited time offer).

So from the user's perspective, this is a bait-and-switch tactic, where the company has used a free offer in order to manipulate the market.

patrick451• 6 months ago

I don't think it's fine for large companies to intentionally lose money to drive smaller competitors out of business. In fact, I think this practice should be illegal and that all who participated should be in jail.

estimator7292• 6 months ago

They're removing functionality that you already heave built into your browser in order to force you to pay to get that functionality back.

That's not monetization that's exploitation.

Would you feel the same if your phone suddenly updated so that your camera records in half quality unless you start paying monthly? It's their product, they can monetize it how they like.

keepamovin9• 6 months ago

Maybe ads-as-business-model is like political ideology - it is not a human universal but must adapt to the place: for instance collectivism over individualism in East Asia, theocratic conservatism over democracy in Afghanistan -- maybe ads as business model is despicable to some regions, but accepted in others? Albania it's apparently illegal for YouTube to serve ads?

isthatafact• 6 months ago

Without regulations, ads seem to infiltrate into every space--virtual or physical--that is not controlled by the owner or some other gatekeeper.

I would hope most people anywhere would see that as a bad thing, especially given the scams and harms that ads are pushing.

I am not sure the best way to improve things, but anyone should be able to live a normal day of life without being forced to see any advertisement.

latexr2• 6 months ago

Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet

Maybe we should stop with that tired fallacious rhetoric? Just because you work at a massive company doesn’t make you “brilliant”.

freedomben• 6 months ago

GP did not say that just because you work at a massive company you are brilliant. Nor did they say just working at Google makes you brilliant.

The irony of your comment of accusing them of using fallacious rhetoric, is that your reply uses one of the most common fallacies of all: strawman fallacy

shevy-java2• 6 months ago

Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet

I am not sure those who work at Google are all brilliant - but it should also not matter, because they support Evil here. They should be ashamed for working for Evil. Guess if the money is right ...

testfrequency• 6 months ago

Apple has entered the chat

AlienRobot• 6 months ago

Agreed. I was leaving the mall with lots of great goods I had found, but then the guard stopped me and told me I was stealing! Imagine paying that guy a salary just to blackmail me into paying them! This is an outrage.

slvng• 6 months ago

The best engineer I've ever known ended up working for years on optimizing ad space auction time by micro seconds.

speedgoose2• 6 months ago

They may have been extremely competent at this, but if they decided to spend years of their relatively short ephemeral life on such a useless project, perhaps they weren’t the best at the time. Perhaps they needed money and were focusing on family life, I don’t know. Who I am to judge? I’m judging though.

bpavuk2• 6 months ago

they either:

a) don't care

b) were desperate enough at the time, then, like that damn videogame, it sucked him in

it's too easy to get carried away by sheer technical complexity of optimization tasks, even if you are optimizing for bad.

hosteur• 6 months ago

That is really sad.

stavros8• 6 months ago

At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side behaviour.

This is where their most brilliant engineers have bested you, because they control the client too.

bpavuk2• 6 months ago

and my answer is Firefox! (maybe also Ladybird and Servo in distant future)

Buttons840• 6 months ago

It's a testament to the health of our free markets and competition that the winning move here is to spend a lot of time and money making your product worse for the average person.

speedylight• 6 months ago

On iOS you can get free background play with Youtube App by putting the video in picture-in-picture -> locking the screen, -> going to control center and hitting the play button. Don’t let Google know!

jwrallie2• 6 months ago

For me just pressing the power button twice and play on the lock screen quickly does it.

baxtr• 6 months ago

If you’re on iOS, put the video on full screen and then put Safari in the background. Next, press play in the Control Center. This should now allow the audio to play in the background.

p4bl03• 6 months ago

What a shame. What's the point even? I'm not going subscribe to YouTube premium anyway, and even less install and use the YouTube app. What happens with this move is just that I will just use YouTube less. I believe that's the case for most people who chose to use YouTube in a browser precisely for background playback.

As an example: knowing that I won't be able to keep the sound playing for the 5 minutes in between two buses when I need to walk and pay attention, I'll probably just launch a podcast from the beginning of my hour of transportation so that I'm not interrupted. For these five minutes, they loose me for almost an hour.

nikanj4• 6 months ago

The point is that youtube is an ad-funded service, and if you're not watching the ads, Google is losing money on you.

wazoox3• 6 months ago

Bwaaa an evil monopolistic empire won't get our money, that's so sad really. They're racking up tens of billions of money every quarter, we don't. I carefully do my best not to give any money to Microsoft, Google and the likes. They must be dismantled anyway.

LinAGKar• 6 months ago

This is about background playback, not adblocking. They can still play ads.

renewiltord2• 6 months ago

Perhaps that's what they desire. Serving YouTube video has marginal cost and you provide marginal zero value. Losing you as a customer is probably desired.

p4bl03• 6 months ago

That's a very narrow view. YouTube is the only reason I have a Google account. Because of it I use some of their other products. And because I'm connected to my YouTube/Google account, they can track my behavior across products and across devices. My usage profile has value if only because it can be correlated to others (who don't bock ads), and because I share link to their platform on social media and messaging app. That's still true even if I'm able from time to time to continue listening to a YouTube video while my phone is in my pocket. But I will share less link and leave them a lot less usage data if they push me away from their products.

ed_mercer• 6 months ago

Will someone _please_ make a decent linux phone already so we can stop this nonsense.

sevenzero• 6 months ago

You're free to do so, probably your million dollar idea right there.

lern_too_spel3• 6 months ago

Pixel runs Linux. Revanced YouTube works fine.

zarzavat2• 6 months ago

I'm confused. Wouldn't Brave just stop telling YouTube if it's in the background or not?

sxde• 6 months ago

Revanced allows you to patch the official Android YouTube apk to enable this feature alongside many others, including a block, Sponsorblock, and dislikes.

https://github.com/revanced/revanced-manager

Rossmann's Grayjay app offers the same functionality in a separate standalone client. It has a paid pro mode, but is free software. I use this on devices that I haven't signed in with Google.

https://grayjay.app/

jwrallie2• 6 months ago

The real reason why sideloading is soon to be blocked by Google, along with NewPipe.

LoveMortuus2• 6 months ago

I feel like saying that there's a paid pro mode is a bit disingenuous.

You can buy a licence to support the app and the development, but the feature set is identical if you pay or not.

A big difference.

shevy-java2• 6 months ago

It should be trivial to work around; for instance, yt-dlp or so (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) and I think you can as-is stream e. g. via mpv or something, probably to the browser too. Some python script for an ad-hoc localhost webserver I'd think.

What is much more worrying is how aggressively Google tries to abuse its de-facto monopoly. I have said it before, I will say it again: Google abusing everyone else is a bad situation. We need to make Google smaller again.

Hackbraten• 6 months ago

I can't believe I'd ever find myself shilling for Google of all companies, but how is it sustainable from a creator's point of view if the viewer neither pays for a subscription nor looks at the ads?

angoragoats2• 6 months ago

I don’t ever pay for a subscription or look at ads on YouTube. I support the creators I like by donating, patreon, buying merch, etc, all of which avoid a monopolist taking an outsized cut of their earnings.

zarzavat2• 6 months ago

YouTube was better before it was taken over by career content creators. People used to make videos because they wanted to share something with the world. It was more authentic. Now everything is about clickbait and maximizing revenue.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that they can get some money from it, but maybe there's too much money now. Every time I hear about a YouTube creator quitting their job and going pro, I fear for the future quality of their output.

xigoi• 6 months ago

Maybe creating videos should be a hobby, not a job.

rchaud2• 6 months ago

Google is doing this for their advertisers, not creators. They have already pulled the rug out for under them with AI search queries and timestamp links that circumventthe creator's own in-video ads.

cyberrock• 6 months ago

Even for paying customers this is rather annoying, because the YouTube app prevents background playback of members' only streams, and I have never been able to find a convincing justification for why this is.

sylware• 6 months ago

It seems youtube wants to become a "video game".

Then they better have a 'correct' client for all platforms out there because they are filthy dominant at worldwide scale.

In my personal space: I don't think they are competent enough to provide a 'correct' set of ELF64 binaries for elf/linux, you know 'wayland->x11' fallback, 'vulkan->CPU' fallback, OLD glibc ABI, etc (BTW, wayland+vulkan = android).

supernes• 6 months ago

It's only a matter of time before the entire YouTube catalog transitions to DRM-encrypted video that you can only watch on Google-sanctioned devices. They're probably doing the math on how to make the platform at least as profitable with a drastically lower DAU count, since alienating users now seems to be their top priority.

hexage1814• 6 months ago

It's only a matter of time before the entire YouTube catalog transitions to DRM-encrypted video that you can only watch on Google-sanctioned devices.

Oh, absolutely. If someone is not seeing this writing on the wall, they must be blind.

tpoacher2• 6 months ago

Vote with your wallet.

Tell your favourite content-creators to consider alternatives alongside youtube (like peertube), and promote the alternative platforms, until the network effect pays off.

raydev2• 6 months ago

Google gave an official response in the article: background play is limited to Premium users, so anyone experiencing this behavior is already not using their wallet.

tpoacher2• 6 months ago

Still.

johanyc• 6 months ago

The thing is none of the alternatives provides as smooth playback as youtube.

skeledrew• 6 months ago

Run desktop browser via xpra[0], connect. Problem solved.

[0] https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/

cornonthecobra• 6 months ago

Install the Youtube Control Panel extension by soitis. It's available for all desktop and mobile browsers, and does a lot to restore sanity on YouTube.

If you want something lighter for Firefox Android. There is also the Background Video Player extension.

erelong• 6 months ago

Not totally familiar with the feature mentioned, might be extra effort but should seemingly work:

Termux > install mpv > mpv "[URL]" (or mpv --no-video "[URL]")

Alternatively:

Termux > proot-distro > set up audio > play in browser like firefox

molticrystal• 6 months ago

More and more Youtube search results are a playlist when you click the result.

This causes a fatalistic chain where the video has a captcha, and if you don't answer it in 5-15 seconds it goes to the next in the playlist and the process repeats. This turbo charges uncontrollably down the series of videos.

The solution is within seconds remove the &pp= (or go back a few pages and do so) this gives you as much time as you need to solve the captcha. Or remember to copy the search result link instead of clicking on it and clean it up.

I wrote to youtube about this bug where playlists don't wait for you to answer the captcha and never heard back from them, which is what I expected, but figured I'd try.

wappieslurkz• 6 months ago

They did not seem to succeed very well. On my M1 iPad Air and iPhone 12 mini background YT playback works mostly fine via Brave, although you might have to go to full screen first before you enter background mode.

tempodox• 6 months ago

Where are the antitrust lawsuits when you need them?

eudamoniac3• 6 months ago

This is annoying of course, but they're still providing infinite free videos. They are entitled to monetize that however they want. They are even entitled to make YouTube premium the only way to watch. Video hosting is not a cheap endeavor. If it's not worth the money, don't pay for it.

01jonny01• 6 months ago

Skipvids is still working

krinta• 6 months ago

It doesnt block on brave on my pc

pjjpo• 6 months ago

Ah good reminder to see if I should repatch with revanced. Not that I actually use YouTube on my phone much, I mostly catch up on SmartTube on weekends. But great to be in control.

YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

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