cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/40372957

fyi:

  • https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp lets you download videos (from youtube and also hundreds of other sites)
  • for desktop, https://mpv.io/ is free and lets you watch youtube (or any other video) at even more and faster speeds than youtube premium does, among many other features
  • for android, https://newpipe.net/ lets you play youtube in the background (and download videos, and block ads, ...)
  • https://ublockorigin.com/ blocks ads everywhere (and yes it does still work on youtube, at least in firefox anyway)
screenshot of youtube saying "Watch in faster playback speeds with Premium"
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[–] 34 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Play video in background

Was such a shamelessly sleazy was to try and twist arms into using their service. Nevermind that it just spawned a thousand different 3rd party tools for getting around this annoying limiter. It just felt like a huge red flag, indicating they were going to use their native app to be fucking annoying to their clients going forward.

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  • [–] -1 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    I don't understand. I play videos in the background all the time.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Not on free YouTube you don't.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (3 children)

    Maybe an issue with your browser then? Which one do you use?

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    The background play is removed on cell phones. It used to be possible, but they removed it, only so they could charge money for enabling it again. I doubt they removed it from desktop.

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