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Comment by kccqzy | Hacker News Reader

> Luckily, apps seem to have a really good memory of where you left off

This is something I have some gripes about. In the old days before backgrounding, pressing the home button literally ends the process. So implementing state preservation and restoration is a must for any non-toy apps.

With backgrounding, apps can linger in the background for a while before being killed. And now many iOS apps don't implement state restoration at all, including built-in apps like Photos. Quick experiment to verify: I open a particular photo, quit the app, reopen the app, and I don't see that photo any more. Instead I see the general timeline view or album view.

I hate this and wish more iOS devs would implement these things correctly. Docs here: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/view_control...

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What happens if you go back to photos via the task switcher instead of home screen icon? (I don't use iOS so I can't check)

Personally, I'd prefer that going back via the task switcher maintains state but going back via home screen doesn't. i.e. task switcher is how you get back to what you were doing, home screen is starting fresh.

If I open the photos app on my phone, I don't necessarily want it to automatically bring up the last photo I was looking at 6 hours ago or whatever. At the very least, if it's going to resume from where I was, there should be some visual indicator IMO (e.g. on Windows taskbar, it's icons are highlighted to show that a window of that application is open & clicking will bring that up instead of a new instance - plus there's the option to middle click & bring up a new instance regardless)

Behavior for home screen vs. task switcher is the same. But you do make a good point that state restoration isn't necessarily something that should always be implemented. The user may not necessarily want to go back to exactly where they were when they last used the app 2 days ago.

As always, experiences may vary. I actually prefer that Photos does not save state as I have never opened the app looking for the same photo twice in a row.

Note that this behavior changed with the new force-quit gestures. When you quit from the app switcher it was decided that the user explicitly wanted to reset UI state, so the UI state restoration data gets wiped. So that behavior you're describing for Photos is expected.

Don’t apps go away when you flick them off the task switcher?

Yeah, "force quitting" apps in that way is the only way a user can force-reset the app's case if they it a bug or if the app starts behaving unpredictably.

If you quit an app, open something else, and then come back to it, it should maintain state.

It does? Unless you've not opened it in like a day, in which case you probably want to start again.

+1 particularly upsetting for apps like YouTube.

It’s a paid feature for YouTube. They want you to pay up for background playback, so they won’t risk the free version being too convenient.

I've resorted to using YouTube with Safari when I want to watch a video in Picture-in-Picture mode.

I'm NOT paying a monthly fee for a feature that basic.

You're not paying for the feature, it is a hostage situation and you would be paying to get a proper user experience.

And it is free with kiwi or Firefox + extension

Or with my iOS jailbreak :)

Bringing you back to the main landing screen with regularity looks like a simple way to push the user towards looking at suggested videos again.

Ugh I hate the YouTube app so much.

Every 3rd open is a "want to try premium?" popover, like some beggar on the street. Closing a video requires 2 precisely positioned and executed swipes. Everything looks like an Android app, like all Googles apps for iOS.

Just terrible.

Well I agree that there’s a lot to hate about the app but if it means YouTube can move to a business model that doesn’t rely on surveillance and advertising then I think I can’t really complain too much

Even if you pay for Premium, it will forget what video you were looking on if the video was paused when you put it in the background. Especially infuriating if you're double-checking something on the web to reply to a comment

The most disgusting dark pattern is that the comment thread will jump to the top if an ad starts playing.

First there was no background playback on iOS because Google needed to show how bad iOS was at multi-tasking, even with all of the relevant API's for background media already in place. Now they degraded the Android user experience to match that so they can sell what could have been possible from almost the beginning as an upgrade.

I guess YouTube finally smothered all the competition with unlimited free money from Google and can now start to squeeze it's userbase.

I think YouTube app is user-hostile on purpose and has similar behavior on Android. I mean, My biggest pain point with it is that after switching to another video, you can’t go back to the previous one without visiting account history. At least I couldn’t find a way to do that, and when I asked a friend who I knew was spending few hours a day in that app, he didn’t even know that there was such a problem (why would you ever want to navigate back?).

I’ve been using Ivory for iOS as NewPipe replacement, but it’s still much inferior, especially when it comes to updates (for example, it cannot play videos right now due to YouTube API change, and past experiences taught me it will take at least a week before developer fixes it).

On iOS you can tap on the video to bring up controls and the go-back button will navigate to the previous video

I find that more often than not, this doesn't work. I've not quite figured out the 'rules' to it, but it's so inconsistent that I usually don't even bother trying.

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