There’s a whole host of reasons people rely on third-party browsers on Android, and chief among them is a pretty popular workaround for background playback in YouTube. Unfortunately, those days might be coming to a close for non-subscribers.
As reported by PiunikaWeb, Android users relying on third-party browsers are no longer able to continue listening to a video in the background, both within other apps and with the display turned off. The bulk of the reports appear to originate from Samsung Internet users, but those relying on browsers like Brave, Vivaldi, and Edge have also reported similar issues. In addition to add-ons like extensions and ad-blockers, these browsers have all become fairly popular thanks to workarounds like background play, allowing for one of the most-wanted Premium features to be utilized by anyone.
Although I’m a Premium subscriber, I’m also a regular Samsung Internet user, so I swapped to an unpaid account to test this out for myself. As expected, video playback ends within a couple of seconds of the display going dark. If you turn the screen back on fast enough, you’ll see the Now Playing card still on your lock screen, but within a couple of seconds, it disappears entirely. It’s not just that the play button no longer works — YouTube removes the card from your lock screen entirely.
I also tried this on Safari on iOS, and both gave me an almost-identical experience: paused playback, followed by the disappearance of playback controls. In comparison, accessing YouTube through Samsung Internet with a Premium account also pauses playback when the display goes dark, but the playback card doesn’t disappear from the lock screen, and you’re able to resume playback. It seems like some check is happening in the background to confirm whether or not an account has access to background play, just like the standard mobile app.
That said, there might be a shred of hope here. As PiunikaWeb points out, at least one Brave user has claimed their browser is once again allowing for background play. On my Pixel 10, I’ve had some mixed success getting Brave to continue playback with the display off. Some videos worked, some did not, and some seemed to fail after a few seconds, without much rhyme or reason as to why any of this was happening. Your results, apparently, may vary — mine sure did.
Either way, we’re talking about a platform that has spent the last couple of years heavily cracking down on attempts to gain Premium features without a subscription, whether that be through ad-blockers or unofficial YouTube clients. It’s not completely clear if this is Google playing another round of whack-a-mole with its unpaid audience, but smart money is on this sort of feature-squashing not being a one-time deal.
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