by politelemon
7 subcomments
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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/
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
by speedylight
1 subcomments
- 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!
- 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.
by molticrystal
0 subcomment
- 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.
- 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.
by wappieslurkz
0 subcomment
- 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.
by cornonthecobra
0 subcomment
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- I'm confused. Wouldn't Brave just stop telling YouTube if it's in the background or not?
- Where are the antitrust lawsuits when you need them?
- Run desktop browser via xpra[0], connect. Problem solved.
[0] https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/
by Hackbraten
6 subcomments
- 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?
- 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.
by shevy-java
0 subcomment
- 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.
- 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.
by sfdlkj3jk342a
0 subcomment
- Still working on IronFox (Firefox fork) on Android with the Video Background Fix extension.
by idrissbellil
1 subcomments
- still works for me
- 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).
by ed_mercer
2 subcomments
- Will someone _please_ make a decent linux phone already so we can stop this nonsense.
- Fuck google
by hsbauauvhabzb
2 subcomments
- 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.
- I've noticed yesterday before and after update. So annoying. I so fucking hate Google and what they've become.
by eudamoniac
0 subcomment
- 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.
by deafpolygon
0 subcomment
- 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.
Hacker News