YouTube website now blocks iOS 14’s picture-in-picture mode for free users | Hacker News Reader

YouTube website now blocks iOS 14’s picture-in-picture mode for free users

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25 pointssoraminazuki15 comments

This is what happens when browsers stop being user agents and start being publisher agents. Its why movie studios didnt used to be allowed to own movie theaters. The website shouldnt even have any way of knowing how it's content is being viewed by the user.

With Google's willingness to bend browsers to their will like this, I fear to imagine what would happen if all browsers other than Chromium drops out of the competition.

Sort of unrelated, but for those that don't know, on Android you can download NewPipe off f-droid, or just grab the APK off github. It's a user-centric youtube client. I don't know if there's an equivalent on iOS but it's much much better than the site or the app on android.

This. The existence of f-droid and apps like New Pipe, Gadgetbridge and Blokada is what kept me from jumping ship to iOS.

It's also something I install/show to my non-techie friends and they're amazed of the new no-ads experience.

There's also YouTube vanced, a "modified" APK of the official YouTube client that bypasses some of the premium blocks.

I have a YouTube Premium subscription which enables background play on Android. However even though I use that feature all the time to listen to podcasts, music or audio books, the main reason I got the sub was to be free of the adds.

When I see friends watching YouTube. It looks like the amount of adds has gotten even worse than its already intolerable level a few years back.

Sounds similar to the prior crimp YouTube pulled on iOS. In order to listen to the audio of a YouTube while the screen was turned off, you need to pay for YouTube Premium.

I highly suggest everyone check out Invidious, a self-hostable proxy for YouTube: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious

I've deployed this a week ago after YouTube's official frontend became even more obnoxious and it's been a much needed breath of fresh air.

They don’t disable PIP if you request desktop website.

The app shouldn’t be allowed to do this as you can’t lock away OS or device functionality behind subscriptions.

If they in turn add it to their app for payed users, that would be much apprecited

And this is why everyone should use NewPipe [0].

[0]: https://newpipe.schabi.org

What kind of tip is that? Google blocks an iOS feature so go buy an Android phone to run newpipe?

Isn't it likely this is just a bug with iOS/Safari or Youtube?

Apple does not have the best reputation for bug free software right now.

People were using PiP just fine immediately after the launch of iOS 14. Since no updates to iOS have been issued since, it's a change in the YouTube website that triggered this problem.

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