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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 46.1 ms ] threadIt's also something I install/show to my non-techie friends and they're amazed of the new no-ads experience.
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.
[0]: https://newpipe.schabi.org
Apple does not have the best reputation for bug free software right now.
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.