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Description of the issue: YouTube will not play in background unless all cookies are blocked. If all cookies are blocked I cannot stay signed in unless it is in “desktop site” mode. I have updated app, checked for updates of my phone itself, cleared cache, cold shut down phone and restarted. I have disabled, relaunched, enabled, relaunched my background play settings also.
Edited to add: it will also background play if I use a private window, but only when I am not logged into YouTube… what is going on lol
How can this issue be reproduced?
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Navigate to m.youtube and select any video
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Lock phone or minimise brave browser
Expected result: audio will not play
Brave Version( check About Brave):Brave 1.84.141, Chromium 142.0.7444.176
Mobile Device details
Additional Information:
Hey, I just tested this on my OnePlus Nord N200 5G (Android 12), same Brave version. Cookies were not blocked, and I used m.youtube.com. It played in the background just fine behind the lockscreen with the media player controls functioning as intended as well.
Can you confirm what phone and OS version it is running?
@masterlink motorola edge 50 fusion (XT2429-2) android 15. It was working perfectly fine and then one moment it just wasn’t. I’ve restarted my phone a few times since and also uninstalled and reinstalled brave and still not working 
ETA I created a new YouTube account and it works with that one but not my main one? I’m so confused by this issue. I haven’t changed any settings in my account before it stopped working… no idea why this is suddenly happening.
Wow so I was going to offer a totally different troubleshooting step until you said it was the account causing it.
When I tested it, it was with my account and not signed in. So this is account specific but I don’t see how that could be. That one might be beyond my knowledge, but I’ll still offer the steps I was going to have you try, since it seems to be a background process closing (but I have no idea why its account specific, but let’s try it anyway).
In the Brave App Info page on Android, go to Battery Usage:
Then enable “Allow background activity”:
If that works, it might be a quirk with that version of Android and stricter preferences. I don’t think it is since you said it’s account specific, but it’s worth a shot. However, if this does work, I don’t recommend leaving background activity enabled (because it lets websites continue to consume resources in the background, and thus would likely need to be troubleshot further, or fixed as a bug).
But, if that does work, we found the root cause. (But not why account specific, lol).
If it’s only happening with one specific account then that makes it seem like it may be bad data/cache. Can you try clearing site data for m.youtube.com (you’ll have to log back in) and then test again?
Additionally, clearing the app cache (from the Android OS Settings) may also be helpful.
Thankyou for trying, I should’ve mentioned I did think of this too and have it set to allow always for brave. I’m beyond confused really. I can’t think of how the account could cause this, but also work on desktop mode in the account that won’t work out of it. Idek.
Yes, I have cleared cache for both apps a few times now and also un&re- installed both a few times too. Thankyou for the suggestion:)
Smart, glad you had already tried that.
So, @Mattches , you know how on desktop YouTube had been rolling out a new UI to people but only certain accounts, and based on certain browsers? (It was random but I think we all finally got the new UI by now?) I wonder, did this rollout happen as well on Mobile, and now I’m wondering, is it possible the same thing is happening, but affecting background play if it’s “new player” based?
I guess, @Helpmepleasety , does the player UI happen to look different between the two accounts? If not, this likely isn’t it, but if they do, this might be related.
(And no, I never figured out how to force one player over the other, I wish I could, I dislike the new player.)
@MasterLink I can’t tell any differences between the two unfortunately. I might charge up an old phone if I can find it and test it on there but I don’t really know what I’d do next even if it worked on an older phone. I think I may have to accept my fate and ditch my old account lol
If you can’t see the difference immediately, you don’t have the new UI. It’s a bit….in your face and “floaty bubbles” like? It’s weird, lol.
So it’s probably not that.
Other than clearing cache, the only other thing I can think of is clearing the app data itself within Android (but if you’ve uninstalled Brave and reinstalled it, you did technically accomplish that step already).
Google’s weird, some things are oddly account specific and no one can tell why. 
Agree. My only theory is that maaaaybe google/YouTube noticed that particular account was using an adblocker(brave) and tweaked some setting but I have no idea. Thanks for your time and effort I appreciate it. I’m somewhat glad I apparently haven’t missed some obvious thing
ETA: tried on different phone with older Android, still didn’t work. Def account specific.
