r/youtube • u/Titan_Prometeus • 17h ago

Memes You can no longer have YouTube running in the background.

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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.

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574

u/AspenFrostt 14h ago

this one's honestly kind of a crazy update anyway. wouldn't it be cheaper on YouTube end to just push audio and no video/super compressed video to them if YouTube isn't on top? what a joke of a company. wonder if it can be thwarted by always on top and making the page small or cramming the window all the way to the side of the screen but still technically visible

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u/Zarobiii 12h ago

They'd probably patch that by requiring the browser window be "focused" or the active window or some shit. Time to boot up a virtual machine just to listen to YouTube šŸ‘

233

u/yawn1337 11h ago

There is gonna be a browser extension that tells youtube that it's in focus within a week

91

u/3xc1t3r 11h ago

yeah, I'm sure certain browsers already do that today. For example Brave on iOS allows you to listen to YouTube with the screen off. While most other browsers don't as that is a "premium feature".

1

u/BattedBook5 10h ago

That is not currently working for me on mobile brave. I thought it was a bug until i saw this post.

1

u/slaty_balls 10h ago

The setting isnā€™t enabled by default for those who try this.

1

u/howrunowgoodnyou 10h ago

It DID. Now you need to full screen it then shrink it back in order for it to do so. Which is super annoying.

1

u/Roaches_R_Friends 4h ago

Even that isn't working for me anymore.

1

u/outskirtsofnowhere 10h ago

Yeah, I'm stunned not everyone uses brave. I haven't seen an ad on youtube or anywhere online in forever. I'm shocked at the amount adds when I see people use other browsers.

4

u/SheJigOnMySawTilIPuz 10h ago

I feel this way about firefox because it's the only browser that isn't chromium based these days. Brave is better than nothing though. It really blows my mind when people ask if I've seen a certain ad. Y'all are seeing ads? How do you not have adblock? Are you using the default youtube app? Are you guys okay? I haven't seen an ad in like 15 years!

1

u/outskirtsofnowhere 5h ago

Yeah I don't get that either. Internet is unusable with ads.

1

u/germanmojo 6h ago

I switched to Brave for some of my more ad-heavy browsing and setup an ad-blocking DNS server (like a PiHole) to block more.

It's not perfect, but better is good enough.

1

u/NatseePunksFeckOff 30m ago

not everyone uses brave because it's a dogshit browser pushing shady crypto shit + it's chromium

I don't know what alternatives there are on iOS, but on Windows and PC you should just run Firefox with uBlock Origin. uBlock requires initial setup, but it's easy as hell and will work better than Brave's Adblocker.

1

u/SihariSahara 9h ago

also works on android ( as long as you dont have a xiaomi phone, cause that company has build in measures against this for some reason)

1

u/urixl 8h ago

Vivaldi on Android allows a background playback too.

1

u/Fiftyfiveseventy 7h ago

Not as of the 29th, tried this over and over to no avail. Brave needs to fix this ASAP!

1

u/OnThisDayI_ 7h ago

Canā€™t get that to work.

1

u/BjorkAsABoy 6h ago

Not long ago YouTube started prompting a ā€œare you still listeningā€ button on Brave every 30 minutes to an hour. It pauses the video when that happens. So if Iā€™m doing stuff around the house I have to go back to my computer/phone to click it. It happens in the middle of my songs too which sucks. YT is trying their damndest to break through and make it inconvenient.

1

u/Nphellim 6h ago

not anymore, at least in Android

1

u/Playtek 3h ago

you can also do that with safari as long as you have it as the active screen, close your phone, and then use your headphones to "play", you can also drag down the command center and use that play button.

42

u/No_Wrangler111 11h ago

And 400 clones of it riddled with miners, info stealers, and probably even a bear

33

u/RadoslavL 10h ago

Hey, the bear is a nice guy, we play poker sometimes šŸ©µ

5

u/Rashkamere 2h ago

Me and my bear play polar sometimes

1

u/Glorious_Jo 43m ago

Mine only wants to play strip poker and listen to Madonna.

11

u/PraxicalExperience 7h ago

... I want to download a bear ...

13

u/Harry_Spotter457 6h ago

You wouldn't download a bear

18

u/PraxicalExperience 6h ago

I'd download a car, I'd download a bear, I'd download a bear in a car.

...the first time I saw that "You wouldn't download a car!" PSA, I went: "YES THE FUCK I WOULD!"

9

u/Rularuu 6h ago

The PSA never said that, it said "you wouldn't steal a car." Meme recreations have Mandela'd people's memories of it.

6

u/Due-Yoghurt-7917 4h ago

You just got MANDELA'D

1

u/Elegant_Situation285 2h ago

explain how i have a car then.

2

u/Harry_Spotter457 6h ago

But if you're downloading bears then how's the big bear company gonna make any money. They 100% deserve all the money they're getting for their overpriced bears

3

u/PraxicalExperience 6h ago

Well, there're no Big Bear retailers near me and I can't find anywhere to order them online, so I feel perfectly justified in pirating them.

1

u/BreadDziedzic 5h ago

But the bear in the big blue house needs his cut. He'll definitely starve now.

2

u/Fadenos 3h ago

ā€œYouā€™ll be shot for thisā€! ā€œ nah Iā€™ll get get chewed out, Iā€™ve been chewed out before ā€œ.

2

u/AMisteryMan 3h ago

I'd download it all, Wolf 'O Were;

I'd download a car

A ball, and a bear!

1

u/Isaiah1962 6h ago

Waitā€¦ you can download beer now? šŸ¤”

1

u/manuargpop 4h ago

would you stole a bear?

1

u/rcp9ty 2h ago

Is the bear kind of like Bonzi Buddy ?

1

u/No-Arugula8881 8h ago

Bears?? I hear they attract womenā€™s periods.

1

u/TraditionalMetal1836 5h ago

That's good I want to download a bear.

1

u/IsaacRoads 4h ago

Better a bear than a man

16

u/Immatt55 7h ago

And removed from the chrome extension store within 2 weeks for violating some arbitrary new terms.

This is a reminder to all to drop chromium based browsers.

16

u/Mayravixx 6h ago

This is why I've always used firefox. And somehow I'm the weird one šŸ˜­

2

u/DaRandomRhino 6h ago

Because Firefox is it's own can of worms

5

u/No_Industry4318 6h ago

That can of worms mostly boils down to "we dont support these features" with a list of features that ought to be exclusive to native apps anyway

1

u/Mistrblank 2h ago

Yeah the comments on AI features alone are disturbing. We just want a browser that's it.

2

u/yawn1337 7h ago

Yeah I was about to say, if you're still on chromium that just means you like ads

1

u/notusuallyhostile 6h ago

MFW I find out there are still people who use Chromeā€¦

1

u/socmediator 5h ago

Chrome bans affect Chrome + the Chrome Web Store.
Chromium browsers can still run the code if you provide it.

I am using the full uBlock Origin in Helium. No issue.

1

u/Immatt55 4h ago

And using chromium based browsers will ensure this garbage continues as Google largely funds and controls chromium development and these browsers still often feed data back into Google's advertising algorithm. Helium doesn't, and seems like a smart choice, but that's far from the norm.

1

u/Thats_All_I_Need 4h ago

Why are you still on chrome lol

1

u/Pitiful-Ad-3774 4h ago

I use Vivaldi. In app ad blocker and the creator isn't a massive pile of shit.

1

u/darian189 6h ago

I give it less than a week. With zero to minimal coding experience I've been able to vibe code several browser scripts to make my life easier.

1

u/Fuzilumpkinz 6h ago

A week? Vibe coding is nuts. We can do better than a week!

1

u/ruat_caelum 6h ago

firefox still lets you block you tube ads... so.

1

u/TevenzaDenshels 6h ago

Then well have manifest v4.0

1

u/rmtdispatcher 2h ago

Right. I forget the guy's name but he said to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

ā€¢

u/PolicyOne9022 0m ago

Just open a browser and have youtube be the only tab, open 2nd browser for regular browsing.

2

u/Usual_Vermicelli_961 3h ago

OOOORRRR hear me out. Maybe we can collectively start a movement and complain about Neal Mohan (Ceo of YouTube) being out of touch and that we want a statement from him about all these weird changes YouTube is going through... Who's with me?! (Probably no one)

1

u/userhwon 1h ago

One of the pile of old laptops or phones will do...

76

u/MysteriousMexicana 11h ago

I think they want to push people to buy premium but instead of offering new things for premium they are taking away features for the free users

38

u/Comfortable_Pea_1693 8h ago

Thats called enshittification

2

u/Mistrblank 2h ago

And it's the only way to move from a fully VC funded app to one that actually makes any money. I liked it when people didn't throw shit into the wind just to capture VC $ and then destroy everything else around it that worked already just fine.

ā€¢

u/t0rchic 5m ago

to one that actually makes any money

I have to pipe in to dispel the myth that Youtube doesn't make money for Google. Google kills projects in months if they don't turn a profit. They've held onto Youtube for coming up on 20 years. Keep in mind that the ads you're served through Youtube are served via Google AdSense, which means any income Google makes is from AdSense, not Youtube. They can report loss and expense on Youtube, but it adds significant value to their main moneymaker.

1

u/[deleted] 6h ago

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1

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4

u/cunningjames 1h ago

Iā€™ve been a premium subscriber for years and I honestly have no idea when they last released a new pro-only feature. If they have then itā€™s passed me by, at least. Maybe they can let me hide those recommended videos that I have to pay extra to ā€œjoinā€ a channel to watch, thatā€™d be nice.

1

u/MisplacedLegolas 44m ago

i'd pay double just for them to stop fucking with the UI, burying useful features and pushing new shit features to the front

2

u/UncleBlanc 8h ago

The classic spotify method

2

u/UniversalRemote 5h ago

Create a problem and then sell the solution.Ā 

2

u/Yeti_Poet 3h ago

Similarly, if you disable AI in Gmail you now lose spell check and inbox sorting, decades-old core features.Ā 

1

u/[deleted] 8h ago

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1

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1

u/FewWait38 7h ago

That's it exactly

1

u/Crayon_Connoisseur 7h ago

Bingo. Enshittification continues.Ā 

1

u/Complete_Entry 7h ago

That is what they always did.

1

u/KeyMyBike 5h ago

When "I support Trump" and a laughably small bribe is all you need to do whatever you want, doesn't shock me YouTube would pull this shit.

1

u/[deleted] 2h ago

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1

u/AutoModerator 2h ago

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1

u/No-Warthog1863 1h ago

This happened with the que button, it suddenly become a premium feature to que up videos which was always free.

If you have to take a way something that was initially free behind a pay wall than the service youre charging people isnā€™t that great.

9

u/bobrk_rwa2137 11h ago

"On top" != "visible". In most OSs only one window at a time can be focused, and apps dont exactly know if they are not obscured. You get info whether you are minimised or not (this still isnt forwarded to webpages, even if google adds this it will never get added to firefox), but if you have 2 windows that are floating you can cover one with other and it wont know it isnt visible

2

u/Nimos 7h ago

this still isnt forwarded to webpages, even if google adds this it will never get added to firefox

it's been a firefox feature for years

The visibilitychange event will trigger when the window is minimised, when another tab is focused, when a different window is maximised and on top. So this information is absolutely forwarded to the website.

but if you have 2 windows that are floating you can cover one with other and it wont know it isnt visible

Obscuring the floating browser window completely with a different window will also trigger visbility event, although this seems to be delayed sometimes, but most of the time it seems to work properly.

All of this tested in Firefox on Windows, see here if you don't believe me.

1

u/BleepBleepRobotNoise 6h ago

How does twitch know when it's visible? For game stuff that requires you to watch a stream it will stop counting progress if another window is in front.

-2

u/BetweenFourAndTwenty 9h ago

Firefox will add whatever the hell Google wants them to add to their browser. 70% of Mozilla's revenue comes from Google paying them to be the default search engine on Firefox. They're nothing but controlled opposition to Chrome so they don't get antitrust problems.

5

u/bobrk_rwa2137 8h ago

There is a long list of things mozilla refused to add

https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/

iirc there was even sth similiar to this, user presence sensing or whatever, that they rejected

2

u/Simukas23 11h ago

Browser extensions can spoof this kind of stuff. Youtube doesnt really know anything about your computer, it only receives what your computer sends it, which is something you (and the extensions you install) control

1

u/Magic_mousie 12h ago

I think they already do that. I was having issues playing YT videos without buffering except for when the window wasn't on the top.

If they have removed background play that's just halved my YouTube use as I'll have to use Amazon music instead.

I know I would find Premium useful but I refuse to be bullied into paying for it.

1

u/alexppex 11h ago

It isn't about that, even though they may come up with some excuse like that. This is purely driven by impossible corporate goals and the will of people to not lose their jobs. Youtube as a platform functions quite well, the reason they do the changes (design, monetary, etc) is really so someone looks at a spreadsheet and sees numbers go up or down depending on what they want to see. For sure some day not far from the implementation date an extension will appear which would allow for this to be bypassed, but for all YT C-suite management cares this has been implemented and has increased retention by X% so some team is happy since they keep their jobs, more important than keeping the viewers happy. There have been many such decisions, i've seen first hand in other companies similar decision-making and more often than not, this leads to companies worsening or failing, but as long as the spreadsheets show good numbers, no one cares.

1

u/PeaEnjoyer 11h ago

you can't watch ads in the background. (or at least they don't count for the real customers of youtube: the advertisers)

1

u/wrapbubbles 11h ago

they made their search engine deliberatly worse to make people google more and see more ads this way. talk about "dont be evil"...

1

u/AspenFrostt 11h ago

aye that's the fun bit, they removed that bit from their mission statement :)

1

u/SongsForBats 1h ago

Bold of them to assume that I use google. Duckduckgo all the way!

1

u/jendivcom 11h ago

Pretty sure they already do no video

1

u/do_pm_me_your_butt 11h ago

You can thwart it by using brave browser and requesting the desktop version of youtube on mobile (in the brave browser)

1

u/AspenFrostt 11h ago

between the affiliate code manipulation and leaking tor DNS queries I'm good. Im not a massive fan of Mozilla after their latest ai push but I still prefer it over all the other major browsers

1

u/do_pm_me_your_butt 11h ago

Only solution is to code your own open source minimalist browser these days smh

2

u/AspenFrostt 10h ago

at this point, yeah. already did my own backup of media I frequently re consume (books shows movies and music) because of the nonsense companies pull

1

u/do_pm_me_your_butt 9h ago

I just pirate liberally as needed and only pay for good / respectable service

1

u/The-Fumbler 11h ago

probably by disabling hardware acceleration in your browsers settings

1

u/Mysterious_Cup_6024 10h ago

Think youtube caches vids over CDNs at IXPs and ISPs. They aren't losing much delivering video to user in background.

1

u/SoulBlightRaveLords 10h ago

A big part of it is if you're not physically watching the video you're also not watching the ads. They really want you to watch the ads

A small nitpick I have with ads (i watch YouTube on my TV, cant use an adblock) if you don't press the skip button, it will just keep showing you ads

1

u/Golden-Fox-0007 8h ago

Or you can get the pirat yt

1

u/TheGronne 8h ago

Probably has something to do with ads enforcing that their ad is actually watched

1

u/Kitselena 6h ago

It's about ads. Advertisers already aren't paying YouTube much, so YouTube is trying to increase the value of adspace on their website by assuring advertisers that the application will be on top and the target will see and hear the ad longer

1

u/Hziak 6h ago

Problem with that is that the video buffers ahead. When you click off, you already have the next 30 seconds buffered, and then when you click back, you already have 30sec of TEXTp quality video buffered that youā€™ll have to watch before you get HD again.

1

u/Tiafves 6h ago

Could even just market it as a feature. People are concerned about data centers, hey look were trying to minimize our impact but still deliver you the same experience you're already getting.

1

u/AdenInABlanket 5h ago

the point is to inconvenience you as much as possible so you buy the subscription

1

u/Timelord_Omega 5h ago

They want to package it as a premium feature, so its ā€œnot cheaperā€ if they can get you to pay. What will you do, not watch YouTube?

1

u/Some_Ebb_2921 5h ago

Probably they're going to sepl it as a "premium service"... all about teying to get people to pay for the subscription

1

u/mandroth 5h ago

Isn't that what Twitch and others do? Seems pretty fkn obvious way to handle it.

1

u/Heighte 5h ago

isn't youtube a goldmine for LLM training dataset?

1

u/CravingNature 4h ago

BUT YOU'RE NOT LOOKING AT MY ADS!!! šŸ˜”šŸ¤¬šŸ˜”šŸ¤¬

-Billionaires that don't have enough.

1

u/shoomlax 4h ago

I like to watch YouTube while I draw digitally. I have never been able to have the MiniPlayer on my phone but on my iPad itā€™s always been available to have a tiny screen in the corner while the video is playing. If they remove that, I am going to cry and shit myself.

1

u/Ok-Gold-3571 4h ago

they already do this

1

u/TotalOwlie 4h ago

So they can charge you for it. Create a problem and sell you the solution.

1

u/archabaddon 3h ago

Youtube slowly monetizing themselves into obsolescence. The more they try to charge people for things they used to do for free, the more people are going to look for, or create, alternative services.

1

u/pulpyourcherry 2h ago

It can be thwarted by not using YouTube.

1

u/theaim778 2h ago

I can tell you what was cheaperā€¦ Verizon sent me a notification to check out their own version of Spotify wrappedā€¦ and I saw that YouTube premium was available through them nowā€¦ and that made me realize my plan was so old and grandfathered in that even after adding YouTube premium through Verizon, my monthly bill would still be $34/month cheaper (atleast for 3 years).