YouTube may have gotten its start as a hub for user-generated videos, but over the years it’s also become a go-to destination for streaming music fans. Type just about any song or artist into the online video site and odds are that you’ll find a video.

But if you use the official YouTube app on your phone, the song will stop playing as soon as you switch to another app… unless you pay $10 per month for a YouTube Red subscription.

There are a handful of third-party workarounds though. One of the most popular is an unofficial YouTube app for Android called OGYouTube. For years, it’s provided a way to download videos or stream YouTube audio in the background, among other things. But now OGYouTube is shutting down.

The developer announced this week that OGYouTube v3.5 would be the last version of the app, and it will be removed from the OGMods website this week as well.

The announcements reads “This is the last update for OGYT, and I’m shutting it down, because it’s infringing YouTube terms of services,” which strongly implies that Google pressured the developer to make this move.

It’s unclear if the app will continue working properly after it’s removed from the server, but the internet being what it is, I suspect you’ll be able to download the final version from third-party sites for a while.

What’s kind of remarkable is how long this app has been around, given that it not only changes the default behavior of Google’s online video service, but also infringes on the name: using “YouTube” in the name of your app is usually a no-no. The app’s user interface was also virtually identical to that for the official YouTube app.

OGYouTube isn’t the only third-party YouTube app that’s probably in violation of Google’s terms of service. But it’s certainly been one of the more popular options over the years.

via /r/Android

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers

4 replies on “OGYouTube app is calling it quits (unofficial YouTube app with background audio streaming)”

  1. I noticed that the website version stopped autoplaying when opening a YouTube link in another tab a few months ago. Was really useful for music. You have to give the tab focus for it to start. I think this is the desktop method of disabling background music, though it’s more of an inconvenience than disabling since they still have to abide by web standards.

  2. “The app’s user interface was also virtually identical to that for the official YouTube app”
    Its not a full third party, its a modified official YouTube app, they reverse engineer then modify, there’s also even many modded versions of WhatsApp…

  3. I prefer xposed modules for that ability. I mean the audio stream and video stream are already separate anyways.

Comments are closed.