YouTube not running in the background

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1

YouTube is not running in the background on brave, iPhone and iPad, iOS system

iOS 26.2

Brave 1.85(116)

2

@TobyandBruno

Please edit your Original Post (“OP”) above, in order to include:

  • Brave Browser version numbers
  • Operating System version numbers
3

Same problem.

Brave iPadOS/iOS

Version 1.85 (116)

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iPad/iPhone OS version: 26.2.1

When Brave is minimised, it buffers the video playing and stop background audio play due to this.

If window is restored it has the spinning wheel, or continues playing, inconsistent behaviour.

Same behaviour on iPad and iPhone.

1 Like
5

To quote myself from another post:

It’s just YouTube screwing with things in different ways. One of the older ways or kind of bypassing is to open another tab and switch to it. YouTube will continue playing in the background and will continue to do so even if you switch apps.

But if you’re actually on the YouTube page as your primary focus and then switch apps or whatever, it will stop. I’m pretty sure this is just YouTube with listeners or whatever for it as a means to try to prevent it from working. They want you to pay for YouTube Premium.

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1 Like
6

iPhone 14 Plus, iOS 26.2, Brave 1.85 (116)

Since the YouTube background play problem appeared a week ago for me, I’ve been using the “change tab” workaround. This worked until last night, Jan 29-30, Malaysian time.

Now the only way I can get background play to work in YouTube is doing the following:

  1. Play a YouTube video.

  2. Change the video size to full screen (tap the button on the lower right of the video).

  3. Click the picture-in-picture button (top left of the video screen). The vid will now play as a picture-in-picture screen.

  4. Go to your Home Screen or to another app or to another tab. Background play is now activated.

  5. Close the picture-in-picture window.

  6. Go back to your paused video and press the play button. Background play will now operate as usual.

  7. This has to be repeated for every new video, sigh.

This is truly a hassle, but what workaround isn’t, right? I have no idea if this works for playlists, or whether you’d have to repeat the procedure for every vid on the playlist.

7

It’s not only in iOS, in Android too , it’s issue with new version.

I have old nightly version, it’s working fine .

I hope brave will fix it.

Thanks

My device android 16

Oneplus nord 4

Brave stable version. V 1.86.146 not working .

Brave nightly that working v 1.87.75 working fine

8

I can now confirm the old tab workaround no longer works for me too.

9

It is YouTube and Google fighting third party browsers and adblockers (the news is in finnish):

10

iPhone 14 Plus, iOS 26.2, Brave 1.85 (116)

Ok, did a bit of tinkering and got the “change tabs” workaround to work again for background play in YouTube.

You need to add a custom filter. I got this one from a post by fanboynz. He was trying to solve another problem and this temporary fix worked for those on Android phones (they actually got full functionality for background play). So, I figured I’d give it a try on my iPhone.

First open any tab in Brave browser. Then click the 3 dots on the lower right corner to access “Settings”. Then click on:

All Settings > Shields & Privacy > Content Filtering

In the box for “Custom Filters” you need to add this line:

<youtube.com##+js(brave-video-bg-play)>

without the <> symbols.

Click “Save”, exit “Settings”, and restart Brave.

The “change tab” workaround (mostly) works now for me. It’s not the full background play functionality that some Android users managed to attain, but it’s certainly less cumbersome than the picture-in-picture workaround.

11

Not sure if IOS has this feature as I am running android, but I found that going into ‘desktop’ mode seemed to solve the problem. Again, might be specific to android or maybe even my device but I hope it helps.

12

Here’s the iOS issue for tracking https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/52281.

13

Thank you for the desktop suggestion. Yeah, I tried everything suggested by others… desktop site, private/incognito tab, logged out, etc. Nothing worked other than the “change tab” workaround. When that stopped working for me, I had to resort to the picture-in-picture workaround.

Now at least with that custom filter, the “change tab” workaround is functional again for me. This is going to be a never-ending arms race between Brave and YouTube, isn’t it?

14

Same goes here. Latest build from play market, OnePlus 12. Happened 13 hours and 23 minutes ago