It can be a bit buggy at times, but when it comes to just playing music with the screen locked, it’s perfect.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-background-play-fix/
Edit: I forgot to also mention that ad blocker extensions make sailing the seas on mobile much more manageable. Extentions, in general, have been a really nice addition.
Just get YouTube Revanced?
This works again?
It’s been working for as long as I have had it. Sometimes if it stops working, you have to create a new patched app with Revanced manager
- RiMusic https://github.com/fast4x/RiMusic
- SimpMusic https://github.com/maxrave-dev/SimpMusic
- OuterTune https://github.com/OuterTune/OuterTune
- Metrolist https://github.com/mostafaalagamy/Metrolist
- InnerTune https://github.com/z-huang/InnerTune
Any of these (YouTube Music) players are better choices than using an extension on a browser.
Also better features like lyrics, better interface…PS: extensions can access all of your browser data, you need to trust the extensions hoping that they aren’t sending your data to some 3rd party
I’ve used most of these and quite frankly they are not good. Each of them quit working randomly or wouldn’t play certain tracks and wouldn’t get an update for days or weeks, at which point I’d move on to the next and get exactly the same experience. They’re FOSS apps, and I’m fairly certain Google is to blame for breaking them, but even so if they are unusable for days or weeks at a time I cannot recommend them.
If you just want a YouTube app with no ads and background playback I would recommend PipePipe. It’s what I’ve settled on after trying everything else, and it’s fantastic. Google breaks it all the time, but updates very quickly bring it back online.
If you want something FOSS that’s closer to the YT Music experience, I don’t know what to tell you.
RiMusic is update regularly, no third party player is perfect, even PipiPipe or Newpipe can break suddenly, Google/YouTube don’t like third party apps using their services and are always implementing ways to break apps
I’m pretty sure extensions can request browsing data for some specific URLs rather than every site you visit. If an extension with functionality on one website asks for access to all of them, then yeah it’s a bad sign.
I’m good with ReVanced, thanks.
Playing YouTube on a mobile browser is finicky at best.
YT on DuckDuckGo browser on iPhone? Never seen an advert and can play videos with the screen off. Easy peasy.
Speaking of, where can I get revanced? There seem to be three different revanced managers floating about…
Revanced.app and the GitHub the other person linked to are the only official sources.
An easy way to tell if you’re using the legit version is if you’re using ReVanced Manager to build the APK yourself. (Don’t worry, it’s easy and straightforward.) If you downloaded an APK directly, you have a fake copy.
i have it and i think i got it from revanced.app, my house hasnt like exploded yet so that one should be good
also ublock doesnt like revanced.net for some reason
There are simpler ways - using newpipe, grayjay, etc.
It’s just a single install. But fair point. This allows you to create playlists, though.
Newpipe also let’s you make Playlist and subs.
It’s not gonna mean much of shit soon, anyone in the know is ditching Firefox for alternatives.
Firefox has changed their terms of service and is now starting to sell user data.
They reverted those changes last week.
The fact that they attempted them at all is a breach of trust (and I say that as someone who’s been a Firefox user and advocate without interruption since all the way back when it was called “Phoenix”).
IDK, time will tell, we’ll see eventually.
We live in the world of enshittification, when changes like that happen, even when briefly reverted, are usually a sign of times to come soon…
I’m curious, ditching Firefox for what? Chromium browsers? More Firefox forks? Is there even a good alternative?
New territory for me as well, but I don’t want to go with Chromium or any fork of that.
As of yesterday I’ve started testing Fennec, a recommended fork of Firefox, that has supposedly gutted much of the bullshit.
I dunno anything for sure though, just basically dipping my toes in the fresh digital waters…
Lol people have been “ditching” Firefox for various reasons for years. If you can barely get people to ditch Chrome, good luck with making some ff fork relevant.
Yeah, your data is the trade away. I’m trying to fork it rn and bake in the extensions.
BE WARNED. These extensions are a prime target for purchase and/or hijacking by malicious threat actors, who then use them to gain persistence on your browsers and steal data. There is no reason to increase your browser attack surface for this feature when better alternatives have been posted in this thread.
There are dozens of these articles dating back the last five years or so.
You know Firefox for android does this natively. No plugin required.
How? Mine does not as it is setup currently.
I play the video in Firefox then lock the screen, which stops the playback but then FF is in the media bar so I can press play to continue playback.
Didn’t realise that this worked, thanks!
That was my thought… I was thinking “I already do this without an extension”, so I had to verify that I wasn’t using an extension that I forgot about.
Newpipe can also be used as a full-on replacement to the YouTube app or YouTube in a browser. It allows for background music, or video and audio downloads for offline enjoyment.
The apk has to be sideloaded, of course.
Came here to say this. Newpipe has been awesome. You don’t have to sign in, no ads, can still sub and make a playlist. It’s basically youtube premium and I have had zero issues with it.
But you don’t need an extension for that? Just standard firefox can already do that.
Yeah. For me the video stops when I lock the screen (or change apps) but I can then press play again on the lock screen (or in the drop down notifications when changed to another app).
This might be about the auto pause that happens during playlist. However OP did not say so I might be wrong.
blud just install newpipe
I prefer pipepipe :3
YSK: Revanced is a thing that exists.
What I do is I just jump into Termux and yt-dlp that shit. Then I can listen to it however I want, and I have it for ever, if I want.
edit: (Also I’m just not a huge fan of addons, but if you are and this works for you, that’s cool)
You can create a file in
~/binnamedtermux-url-opener. It’ll be executed when you “Share” a URL to Termux. In the script you can go wild. Setup a menu with options:- Download video to a folder.
- Download a video to a hidden folder.
- Download just the the audio then convert it to MP3 with your desired quality.
Stuff like that.
Less technical people can simply install Seal:
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.junkfood.seal/
Honestly, Seal is just easier, and even supports custom command templates, so it does literally everything you could want.
But Termux can do more than just yt-dlp.
You can also use yt music revanced.
And for everyone else who doesn’t want extra garbage on their phone it’s: switch to ‘Desktop Site’ > continue doing whatever else. This applies to both Firefox and Firefox Focus
No need promote/install more unnecessary stuff on your phones 🤦
Edit- that being said, I still include no script/ublock in FF and use FFF for yt videos when I don’t want to clog my Tubular history (newpipe fork with sponsor block) with useless stuff that I’ll never want to rewatch.
I also use it to listen to podcasts/ lore videos without having my screen on when I’m falling asleep. It’s also nice for driving. If you make a playlist and have an ad blocker, it WILL continue on to the next song.
I’m actually thinking of forking Firefox and making a lite version mostly geared towards playing YouTube content without ads and without restrictions.
Just use NewPipe or one of it’s forks.
Use fennec or Ironfox
