Media play on background stopped working on Android

[vbspam]

Description

Media play on background stopped working in Youtube on Samsung S25+ and Huawei P20

It stopped working overnight. There were no updates of Brave nor OS in between. It is not working on two phones with different Android and Brave versions (see below).

Steps to reproduce

1. Start Brave
2. Open Youtube video
3. Try to switch to another tab (or switch to other app, or lock the screen)
   Note for QA: make sure it works with and without Brave Experimental Adblock Rules and Brave Shields on and off.

Actual result

Audio stops playing. Probably the whole stream is stopped as when I switch back to the youtube page, it behaves like recovering after being offline.

Expected result

The audio shall continue playing.

Reproduces how often

Easily reproduced

Brave version

Tested on two devices

• Version on Samsung: Brave 1.85.120, Chromium 143.0.7499.192
• Version on Huawei: Brave 1.85.117, Chromium 143.0.7499.146

Device

Tested on two devices

• Samsung S25+: Android 16; Build/BP2A.250605.031.A3
• Huawei P20: Android 10; Build/HUAWEIEML-L29

Channel information

• release (stable)
• beta
• nightly

Reproducibility

• with Brave Shields disabled
• with Brave Rewards disabled
• in the latest version of Chrome

Miscellaneous information

I tried to clear the site cookies, checked developer options ("Don’t .. activity"), nothing works.

It does not look like OS related issue as VLC and Spotify can play audio on background.

It is also not specific phone related as it occurs on two different phones.

It looks that it is Google account related as when I log out my account, it starts working.

My initial report is here https://community.brave.app/t/media-play-on-background-stopped-working-in-youtube-on-android/647967

NOTE: I found that there were two causes of the symptoms described above. I solved the first, therefore I had to review this issue report significantly. For details please see history of this issue.

[vbspam]

It looks to me that it is Android related as when I test it on iPhone, the audio can play on background.
Tested on Brave: Version 1.85 (116) BraveCore 1.85.116 (143.0.7499.110) Device iPhone14,4 (iOS 18.0.1)

[resident-uhlig]

I observe that if I log out my account, it allows switching to other tab (after switch it plays the sound) but when the screen locks or if I switch to other application it stops playing.

i observe something similar on youtube, but a bit different: when logged out, background playback works in all cases, that is switching tabs, apps, and even locking the screen manually.

when i log in in another tab while the background playback is running, then the playback stops as soon as the login process is complete. when i log out again, then i can manually restart the playback and background playback works again (sometimes a page reload is needed though)

edit: my current work-around is to login to see my subscriptions, then open each video in a private tab for background playback.

[vbspam]

I observe that if I log out my account, it allows switching to other tab (after switch it plays the sound) but when the screen locks or if I switch to other application it stops playing.

i observe something similar on youtube, but a bit different: when logged out, background playback works in all cases, that is switching tabs, apps, and even locking the screen manually.

when i log in in another tab while the background playback is running, then the playback stops as soon as the login process is complete. when i log out again, then i can manually restart the playback and background playback works again (sometimes a page reload is needed though)

edit: my current work-around is to login to see my subscriptions, then open each video in a private tab for background playback.

Thank you for your response. I found that I reported issue symptoms which had two independent (probably) causes. My first issue (with browser being cut off audio when on background) was fixed by Developer options and was probably caused by Samsung update. The second is still remaining having the same symptoms you are confirming.

After some investigation, it looks that only some accounts are poisoned by Google A/B testing because if I login with my other google account the problem does not manifest and everything works ok.

I would love to help somehow more, but I have no idea how to debug it. Does anyone have any hints how to debug the youtube scripts in Brave on Android?

[Arthur-Kenichi-Condino]

changing the user-agent-string to a desktop browser (I use AdGuard for Android for that) or using Desktop Mode tricks YouTube into not blocking the background playback. Also, YouTube resizes itself in the Brave Browser when using a different user-agent-string, but some optimizations like rotating automatically when going fullscreen stop working. It's faster to just open private tabs for the moment.

[hasanablak]

Interestingly, if you open youtube.com in the Brave browser and switch to Desktop site from the site settings, the video will continue playing in the background and even when the screen is turned off. Similarly, when you open youtube.com in an incognito tab and play a video, the video keeps playing in the background or while the screen is off. In incognito mode, YouTube works this way without needing to switch to the desktop version.

So, in an incognito tab, the video can be played in the background and with the screen off even without using the desktop version, whereas in a normal tab the video cannot be played in the background or with the screen off.

I think this is related to notifications, because normally a notification with playback controls (play buttons at the top) would appear, but it doesn’t appear anymore. However, when opened in an incognito tab, a media player notification does appear in the notification bar.

I created a second Brave browser app using Android’s dual apps feature. Since this second app had no session, I was logged out of YouTube. I immediately opened YouTube and tried playing a video in the background, and it worked.

Later, I signed in to my Google account in this new Brave browser app and tried again to play a YouTube video in the background. This time, the video did not play in the background.

[samartnik]

Note for QA: make sure it works with and without Brave Experimental Adblock Rules and Brave Shields on and off.