YouTube Just Blocked This Popular Hack for Free Background Play – Lifehacker

Michelle Ehrhardt Michelle Ehrhardt Associate Tech Editor Experience Michelle is Lifehacker’s Associate Tech Editor, and has been reviewing games, laptops, phones, and more for over 10 years. She is based in New York City and holds a master’s degree from NYU. Read Full Bio February 3, 2026 Add as a preferred source on Google Add as a preferred source on Google Credit: Irada Zaitova / Shutterstock.com Key Takeaways YouTube background play has broken in mobile browsers including Samsung Internet, Vivaldi, and Microsoft Edge. Google confirms that it disabled the feature on purpose, as background play is intended only for YouTube Premium subscribers. Some users are still able to access free background play through alternate methods, but it’s unclear how long that will last. Table of Contents For Christmas, I got my husband and myself YouTube Premium, and as much as I hate paying for yet another streaming service, it’s pretty dang nice. There’s ad-blocking, sure, but there are also other bonuses, like additional playback speed options and audio that continues to play in the background when you lock your phone. However, some users have developed hacks to get a few of these features without a subscription, believing they should be
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