Popular YouTube background playback workaround stops working

YouTube is blocking a popular workaround for background playback — e.g. playing only the audio of a video with your screen off — in a move that'll likely prove frustrating to a number of users.

Android users have relied on third-party browsers to work around limitations on background playback, but now users of Samsung Internet, Brave, Vivaldi, and Edge have reported being unable to play YouTube sound in the background, according to tech site 9to5Google.

Piunikaweb, a Pixel-focused tech site, wrote that the "sudden, simultaneous failure across multiple browsers strongly suggests a targeted change by YouTube." 9to5Google tested the new limitations on Samsung Internet and found that "video playback ends within a couple of seconds of the display going dark."

YouTube limits background play on mobile to Premium subscribers, so the company's targeting of a workaround makes sense, even if it is frustrating to users. So, for now at least, it seems the folks who used the third-party browser workaround are stuck like the rest of us folks who're operating on Chrome or Safari: Pay up or give up your background sounds.