alt Hacker NewsNewpipe remains one of the best solutions for background playback. They do tend to move pretty quickly to patch "fixes" that YouTube throw in now and again. It's also useful for video backups if you need to preserve them for any reason.
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I'm a NewPipe user as well, unfortunately the experience is getting worse there too. Might be because I also use a VPN, but after every couple of videos I have to cooldown my usage until the IP block is reset.
This started happening for me a few weeks ago.
I recommend PipePipe: https://github.com/InfinityLoop1308/PipePipe
> It's also useful for video backups if you need to preserve them for any reason.
You can download only the soundpart as mp4 or opus too.
Why install additional software? Firefox hasn't broken for me only the Chrome clones.
I released a browserbox variant many years ago that could ensure background playback on YouTube. Despite multiple posts here and on PH, it never gained any traction. It seemed people were simply not interested in overcoming no background playback for free on every platform (including mobile).
Same time, one can appreciate the YouTube business: once you give something away for free, people absolutely loose their fucking minds if you make it paid. Once you set the bar to zero for payment, people will murder in the streets and despise you if you reasonably charge for what could have been a paid product all along. So there's a psychological blocker to switching on payment that people are ready to go to war for. It's the same blocker that cripples "open source" sustainability. People quickly develop an entitlement-callous, and feel cheated if you require payment instead of just continuing to surrender value to them.
It reminds of how a group of primates will kill a handler who gives cake to one, but not the group. This "free / paid" tension triggers some kind of deep-rooted human fairness wiring that is really tricky to extinguish once activated. That's why you should never open source your code and never give stuff away for free, if you plan to posslby make money from it somehow or make it paid in future. Because if you ever withhold the siphon of value related to ads or other 'you as a product' models, they will launch a jihad against you.
I think it's interesting how the human fairness reflex, often correct, breaks down in the context of "provider / consumer" dynamics. Even if the provider is not some "evil mega corp" but simply a solo software creator, people will still feel you are attempting to rob them of all dignity and debase their honor if you require payment for what was previously gratis.
Oh well. Live and learn, YouTube.
I am using Tubular, a NewPipe fork that has built-in SponsorBlock and ReturnYouTubeDislike features.