YouTube has a couple of really practical features if you’re paying for the Premium subscription. The most important one is, of course, the lack of ads. But there are other niceties as well. One of them is being able to listen to a video while your phone is locked. You can just start playback in the app and lock your phone. This is especially useful when you’re playing talk shows or other content that doesn’t really require the video part. For a long time, you could also do this in third-party browsers without a subscription. But Google has apparently figured out how to block exactly that.
YouTube Background Playback: Officially Subscription Only
As PiunikaWeb reports, there have been a slew of new reports that background playback using a browser has stopped working. Up until recently, you could, for example, use Samsung Internet or Microsoft Edge to start a YouTube video and lock your phone without it stopping. This is no longer the case for Google’s streaming service.
Now, when you lock your phone or just exit the browser, the audio just stops playing. For a brief second, some users could even still see the media controls appear before disappearing.
Due to various reports across multiple browsers, it seems likely that Google itself has changed something in YouTube to close this loophole. For years, users were able to take advantage of this little trick. Google has not officially commented on the issue.
According to 9to5Google the issue looks similar on iOS. You can start a video in Safari, but the playback controls disappear once the app goes into the background.
Small Glimmer of Hope for Some Users
While many users are reporting the issue, there is at least one who wrote that background playback is working again when using Brave. They had problems last week, but claim that it is working again. Another user is saying that switching to the desktop site is working as well for them.
Given these disruptions, it seems like Google is trying to find ways to close this loophole for good. It might just be a question of time until you’ll need to pay for the subscription to get access to this and many other features of YouTube Premium.
