Youtube stops playing after a few min when screen is locked
First off, yes, YT, microg, and manager have unrestricted battery. I've also turned off phone power saving.
What happens:
I've been having this problem for several months but haven't found the solution. When my screen is off Youtube will stop playing after about 3 min. If I open my phone YouTube starts playing immediately, and I don't need to navigate to the app and push play. If I do nothing it will resume playing after about 20 min. I see it stop pretty regularly at 2:59 min but I've also seen it get hung up on the end of a track that's less than 3 min that's part of a playlist. If I leave my screen open YT will not stop (but I don't want to accidently butt dial someone when I have my phone in my pocket).
What I've tried:
After trying a bunch of stuff (listed below), I had my partner, who has the exact same phone as I, download and install everything and it worked just fine for them. On my phone I then cleared each app's cache, uninstalled everything (YT, microg, manager), restarted my phone, and reinstalled everything using the same version of YT, but this did not resolve the problem. We checked some settings to be sure they were the same on both phones, but not all of them because there's a lot. We tried to make our configurations exactly the same but something must be different because I'm not getting the same results. I'm about ready to factory-reset my phone as I don't know what else to try.
List of things I have tried/checked based on a search of the subreddit:
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triple checked that YT, manager, and microg have unrestricted battery access
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battery saving turned off in phone setting
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"put app to sleep if unused" setting is turned off
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Base YouTube app has been pulled out of deep sleep
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YT background play setting is turned on
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spoof video streams is turned on
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cleared app cache, uninstall/reinstall with recommended version (20.13.41) and older version (19.34.42) using default patches
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rechecked all settings listed above after reinstalls
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changed the miniplayer to a different configuration and changed it back
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installed on same model phone (worked just fine)
Phone is Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G running Android 13
Any ideas are appreciated. My level of technical is like level 1 tech support (try turning it off and back on again) so I may need some extra explanations.
Posted Aug 4, 2025, 4:25 PM UTC