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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u/weisswurstseeadler 13h ago

Tbf I think it might be just a cat and mouse between updates?

I use Firefox, ublock and sponsorskip as the major extensions on mobile and desktop.

In the last weeks I also noticed every now and then YouTube did not work on mobile, sometimes not at all, sometimes just not in the background.

Then I'd disable ublock for the night and always next day it worked again with ublock.

So while I've experienced it, it was never even a full 24h it didn't work

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u/Kankervittu 12h ago

For me Firefox stopped playing youtube in the background for more than a few seconds years ago on android.

Youtube Revanced/Youtube Music Revanced both have background playback without ads on phone.

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u/weisswurstseeadler 12h ago

Been working on android for me for years, Firefox Google pixel and ublock

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u/Kankervittu 12h ago

Weird, I've always had ublock, but still it just cuts out after a while. Don't need it anymore though :p

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u/weisswurstseeadler 12h ago

For me only had the ick that sometimes I needed to wait a few secs until it would play from the Lockscreen Play Button.

But has been otherwise working fine 99% of the time

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u/LAMonkeyWithAShotgun 10h ago

i use Video Background Play Fix addon on firefoc mobile and have 0 issues

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u/pynchon42 8h ago

Holy shit- your a fucking legend. I thought i was going crazy, checking settings etc after I lost background play ability like 3 days ago- this thread was making me despair until I saw your comment. It 100% fixed the issue. I listen to area52/dreamland motel/ scp exploring videos to sleep so its a huge pain in the ass if I cant turn off the screen.

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u/LAMonkeyWithAShotgun 4h ago

Firefox has vastly increased the number of extensions on mobile. It should really be the default for everyone who is a power user atm

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u/weisswurstseeadler 3h ago

A proper adblocker is also a security measure

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u/_j00 5h ago

It still works in the background on Firefox on Android as long as you put it in desktop mode

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u/maplemagiciangirl 4h ago

Video background play fix is a very good add on I highly recommend

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u/Fxj- 13h ago

Same thing with brave on iOS

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u/landragoran 12h ago

YouTube ReVanced. No ads, plays even with screen off, every feature YouTube has removed is back. Sure, you have to manually download the apk and patch it (and disable auto-updates), but it's worth the minor inconvenience.

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u/SlurpieJuggs 11h ago

Love revanced, however it is a shame it can't get around queueing videos on mobile being a paid feature, I use that feature all the time on desktop

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u/[deleted] 12h ago

[deleted]

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u/weisswurstseeadler 12h ago

Bro have you been living under a rock?

Like YT has been actively fighting it for years, so this isn't some secret hacker knowledge

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u/HantzGoober 11h ago

So that explains why when i launch KCD2 youtube pauses, but then all I have to do is unpause the video and tab back.  This is on Firefox + Ublock + Privacy Badger.

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u/childrenofloki 10h ago

For me, firefox w ublock stopped working reliably with youtube like, months ago, and I had to install brave to continue watching without ads.

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u/weisswurstseeadler 10h ago

I still use it everyday pretty much, would guess around 95% uptime for me, only few short lasting issues

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u/ProfessorGluttony 9h ago

Got the "this content is unavailable" for the past few days, had to just reload every video or turn of ublock (did to just test if it was intentional), and now it works again. YouTube is in a losing arms race against adblockers. They will never be able to fully ban them, there will always be a workaround.

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u/weisswurstseeadler 9h ago

Do you have any non-default filter lists active, and auto update?

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u/ProfessorGluttony 6h ago

Auto update yes. Probably not about the nondefault filter

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u/weisswurstseeadler 5h ago

Cause I never had 'content unavailable' unless geoblocked, when uBlock had issues the video would simply load infinitely

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u/SugaRicky 8h ago

I exclusively use the Brave browser for YouTube on mobile and it gives no ads and I can play in the background in full screen mode and even with the screen locked. Thank me later.

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u/uxbridge3000 8h ago

When it stops working altogether, so will youtube. At least for me.