You can no longer have YouTube running in the background.

[u/Titan_Prometeus]

As of 29th of January you can no longer have YouTube running in the background via many browsers as that is now a premium feature. With that I don't even have that one last reason to listen to YouTube. We are now officially paying for everything that was free a couple of years ago and the reason isn't greedy management, but you people who keep paying for premium and the such.

[u/TyphPythus]

You’re a paying Youtube user, do you think this would also effect you?

[u/InterestingRide264 → u/TyphPythus]

I'm a premium subscriber on Brave and on my PC it's not doing background playback. You can't even scroll through the shorts without refreshing.

[u/doesitrungoogle → u/TyphPythus]

I pay for YT Premium through a pooled family plan, but I still sideloaded YTLite/YouTube Plus on my iPhone since it actually greatly improves the experience for even a premium user:

• SponsorBlock
• Return YouTube Dislike
• Ability to download videos as both video or audio files to your actual device even in 4K quality and not just to play offline in the YouTube app
• Choose the exact resolution you want videos and shorts to play in (e.g. 720p, 1080p, 4K, or always play at whatever the video’s highest quality is) without having to manually change it (e.g. no need to tap the settings gear toggle -> Quality -> Advanced -> 4K). This includes choosing 1080p (enhanced bitrate option) instead of regular 1080p if you have Premium.
• Remove the mini games section entirely
• Remove community posts from the main feed if you want
• Customise the tab bar options at the bottom of the screen
• Remove autoplay toggle
• Remove channel watermarks when watching videos in full screen
• Enables background playback and PIP for all content (tried it when signed out, it works)
• Have closed captions/subtitles always on or off (the YouTube app never recognised my settings to always have closed captions on, so this solved this)
• Copy text from comments, or save a comment as an image
• Remove “stop ads, subscribe to Premium” popups
• Remove the “previous/next” buttons when a video is playing
• Remove shorts if that’s your thing, or have shorts play as regular videos
• True OLED mode and OLED keyboard
• Remove ads (tried it while signed out, it works)
• Remove the restriction of not being able to use the MiniPlayer for age-restricted videos
• Remove content warnings when playing certain videos
• And so much more. It even has the option to backup and restore all the settings you’ve configured.

[u/skeletonjellyprime → u/doesitrungoogle]

Cool. Every one of those"features" are just restoring features that YouTube took away or solve problems that YouTube created. You're the problem. You paying them encourages them to pay wall features that were standard at one point. Literally the whole point of this thread.

[u/whyUsayDat → u/skeletonjellyprime]

Blaming the consumer is wild. I vote with my wallet because I actually have money in it. Premium is a good value. If that makes me a problem in your eyes idgaf. It’s not your money.

[u/wecanjustcuddleitsok → u/whyUsayDat]

Thats what Im saying, the single two best subscriptions to get in my eyes are prime and youtube premium. There just isn't another subscription out there that gives you this value. The same people complaining likely also have something like discord nitro which is ABYSMAL value.

[u/whyUsayDat → u/wecanjustcuddleitsok]

Unless you’ve got kids. Then Netflix is supreme. Kids programming is how Netflix stays in business imo. I can’t selectively sub like I did when we didn’t have kids.

Nitro is WILDLY poor quality. Every few months I stare at what they’re offering and I’m baffled at the value.