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YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers
- eudamoniac 9mo agoThis 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 9mo agoSkipvids is still working
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- krinta 9mo agoIt doesnt block on brave on my pc
- pjjpo 9mo agoAh 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.
- idrissbellil 9mo agostill works for me
- Banditoz 9mo agoNot 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.
- poulpy123 9mo agoFuck google
- gethly 9mo agoI've noticed yesterday before and after update. So annoying. I so fucking hate Google and what they've become.
- jsilence 9mo agoThis 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 9mo agoYouTube NonStop: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-nonstop/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-nonst....
- keyle 9mo agoIf 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 9mo agoNewpipe 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.
- LoveMortuus 9mo agoFor 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.
- Pooge 9mo agoyt-dlp is great if on desktop.
- deafpolygon 9mo agoI do this, then send it to VLC on mobile.
- jraph 9mo agoNote that there are great UIs around yt-dlp on mobile, for instance Seal, if it can be of any help. https://f-droid.org/packages/com.junkfood.seal/ https://f-droid.org/packages/com.junkfood.seal/
- manwithaplan 9mo agoIt works perfectly fine under Termux, too.
- ErenayDev 9mo agoI am using Tubular, a NewPipe fork that has built-in SponsorBlock and ReturnYouTubeDislike features.
- stevenhuang 9mo agoTubular 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.
- hsbauauvhabzb 9mo agoImagine 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.
- laserlight 9mo agoIt 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 9mo agoBut 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?
- mschuster91 9mo 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.
- hsbauauvhabzb 9mo agoWhile that may be true, subscription services are a capitalist move that’s pricing premium well above profit margins. ‘YouTube is failing because free tier is too expensive to be offset by ads’ and ‘YouTube premium is overly expensive’ can both be true. Shareholders care about maximising profits now, not overall product longevity.
- xnx 9mo agoThis 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 9mo agoThat's actually quite easy. onBlur, etc
- reddalo 9mo agoJust 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 9mo agoNice - 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 9mo agoThe 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.
- salawat 9mo ago>That is what it means to have control over your own computing. Ah, see, there's the problem. The corpo apologists in the room don't want you to have that. The hardware you bought; err, licensed; to them, is their playground.
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- doe88 9mo agoThere 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.
- deafpolygon 9mo agoThis 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.
- barnabee 9mo agoBackground 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.
- ThatMedicIsASpy 9mo agoThey removed the UI option to find newest videos first yesterday.
- raydev 9mo agoConsumer laws should regulate free content delivery?
- barnabee 9mo agoYes, 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.
- lmz 9mo agoServing requests is a feature of Youtube and if they don't want to serve your client... well you didn't pay for it anyway.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- VadimPR 9mo agoThey 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.
- reddalo 9mo ago>They corned the market, drove everyone out of it, and are now rent-seeking. It's almost dumping [1]: they gave a service away for free (even if they were losing a lot of money) just to make it unfeasible for any other company to start a competing service. Vimeo could have been a competitor, but then they pivoted to a professional market and now that Bending Spoons bought them [2], I'm not sure they will even have a future. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45197302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45197302
- redml 9mo agoi 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 9mo 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 9mo agoStill working on IronFox (Firefox fork) on Android with the Video Background Fix extension.
- kurito 9mo agoWhat 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 9mo agoAren't they going to win in the long run with remote attestation?
- nikanj 9mo ago*Allocating man-hours towards making sure that users actually pay for the service they're using, either via youtube subscription or ads
- saagarjha 9mo agoMonetizing a basic OS feature is not a good look.
- sidrag22 9mo agothe only time ive tried to use a feature like that, is when im in the car listening to a podcast or something. juggling the phone to not only skip ads, but also forcing the phone screen to be active, is a hazard. In my case this loophole being closed, wouldn't make me pay for premium... but it would make a younger version of me certainly more dangerous on the road.
- angoragoats 9mo agoDo you ever watch videos on a computer? If so, do you ever switch away to a different tab, or to a different app entirely, and keep the video playing in your browser tab? YouTube artificially prevents that exact same action on tablets and phones unless you pay them. Multitasking is a basic OS feature, no matter what kind of device you’re using. Gating it behind a paywall is user-hostile behavior at its finest.
- speedylight 9mo agoOn 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!
- jwrallie 9mo agoFor me just pressing the power button twice and play on the lock screen quickly does it.
- baxtr 9mo agoIf 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.
- p4bl0 9mo agoWhat 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.
- nikanj 9mo agoThe point is that youtube is an ad-funded service, and if you're not watching the ads, Google is losing money on you.
- LinAGKar 9mo agoThis is about background playback, not adblocking. They can still play ads.
- wazoox 9mo agoBwaaa 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.
- nikanj 9mo agoIf they are an evil monopolistic empire, why are you upset you can’t use their services? It’s not like watching shorts is a matter of life/death.
- wazoox 9mo agoThey're a monopoly. They force me to use their shitty, ad-laden, privacy-violating services. I'll use all possible circumvention measures possible. Of course I use alternative solutions as much as possible, but it's a monopoly, remember ? Not a public service. Not a sane, competitive market. Dismantle the GAFAM. Death to them. They're evil, imperialistic, freedom-killing machines.
- ed_mercer 9mo agoWill someone _please_ make a decent linux phone already so we can stop this nonsense.
- lern_too_spel 9mo agoPixel runs Linux. Revanced YouTube works fine.
- sevenzero 9mo agoYou're free to do so, probably your million dollar idea right there.
- zarzavat 9mo agoI'm confused. Wouldn't Brave just stop telling YouTube if it's in the background or not?
- sxde 9mo agoRevanced 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 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/ https://grayjay.app/
- LoveMortuus 9mo agoI 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.
- jwrallie 9mo agoThe real reason why sideloading is soon to be blocked by Google, along with NewPipe.
- shevy-java 9mo agoIt should be trivial to work around; for instance, yt-dlp or so (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 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 9mo agoI 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?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- angoragoats 9mo agoI 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.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- zarzavat 9mo agoYouTube 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 9mo agoMaybe creating videos should be a hobby, not a job.
- rchaud 9mo agoGoogle 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 9mo agoEven 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 9mo agoIt 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 9mo agoIt'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 9mo 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.
- tpoacher 9mo agoVote 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.
- skeledrew 9mo agoRun desktop browser via xpra[0], connect. Problem solved. [0] https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/ https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/
- cornonthecobra 9mo agoInstall 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 9mo agoNot 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 9mo agoMore 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 9mo agoThey 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 9mo agoWhere are the antitrust lawsuits when you need them?