YouTube cracks down on free background playback on mobile 📵

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You got used to it: start a YouTube video, turn off your screen, slip your phone into your pocket—and keep listening to your favorite podcast without paying for Premium. You weren’t alone. And that little workaround is now disappearing.

Over the past few days, a growing number of users have noticed that background playback now stops as soon as the screen turns off or they switch apps—even when using third-party mobile browsers like Samsung Internet, Brave, Vivaldi, or Edge. Behind the change is a very clear objective: pushing background playback firmly back behind the YouTube Premium paywall, everywhere and at all times.

The end of a very popular loophole 🚪

For years, mobile browsers acted as a back door to using YouTube as a free audio streaming service. Load the site, switch to desktop mode or Picture-in-Picture, lock the screen—and the audio kept playing. It was a gray area, tolerated or at least loosely enforced, that let users bypass the limitations of the official app.

That gray area is now closing. On several third-party browsers, YouTube cuts playback the moment a video moves into the background, sometimes preceded by a brief system message before the controls vanish. Google isn’t hiding the intent: background playback is “a feature intended to be exclusive to YouTube Premium members,” a spokesperson says, adding that the experience has been updated to be consistent across platforms.

Samsung Internet, Brave, Firefox… who’s affected? 📱

The first complaints surfaced from Samsung Internet users, followed quickly by reports involving Brave, Vivaldi, Edge, and others. The behavior is consistent: everything works fine as long as you stay in the tab, but the moment the screen turns off or you switch apps, playback stops.

There’s still some inconsistency. Some users report temporary returns to normal behavior on Brave, or different results depending on the device. But the overall trend is clear: YouTube is tightening the screws on third-party mobile browsers to prevent background playback from remaining a de facto free feature.

Workarounds… for now 🕵🏾

As usual, the community hasn’t given up without a fight. A few tricks still work—most notably on Firefox, where changing the user agent can make the browser appear as a different type of device. These workarounds, however, are technical, niche, and fragile. There’s no guarantee they won’t be blocked in the next server-side update.

More drastic solutions are also gaining traction, including third-party apps or alternative clients, sometimes distributed outside official app stores. These come with obvious trade-offs: security risks, potential account issues, and violations of YouTube’s terms of service. In short, the more YouTube closes its “official” doors, the more users are pushed toward gray areas where the experience is rarely smooth—and rarely risk-free.

YouTube Premium or a degraded experience? 💸

This move comes as YouTube continues to make its free experience less comfortable: more ads, tougher measures against ad blockers, and now the shutdown of background playback via mobile browsers. The message is hard to miss. If you want uninterrupted playback, fewer interruptions, and podcasts in your pocket, you’ll need to pay.

For Google, it’s about protecting YouTube Premium, which has become central to its business model in a fiercely competitive video market with increasingly volatile ad revenues. For users—especially those quietly using YouTube as an audio streaming service—it feels like another red line, raising uncomfortable questions about the balance between free access, convenience, and monetization.

Who decides your digital comfort now? 🔍

By disabling background playback on third-party mobile browsers, YouTube isn’t just fixing a loophole. It’s redefining what you can do for free on one of the world’s most widely used platforms. This decision fits into a broader trend: major platforms gradually locking features behind subscriptions, not for technical reasons, but to push users toward paid tiers.

The real question is simple: how far are you willing to go to preserve comfort in your everyday digital life? Sit through more ads, add yet another subscription, or give up small habits that quietly became essential over time?

And you—how are you dealing with YouTube’s crackdown on background playback in mobile browsers? Have you switched to YouTube Premium, found an alternative service, or changed your listening habits entirely? Let us know in the comments how much you’re willing to pay—or give up—to keep YouTube comfortable.