Key Takeaways
- November 7th’s YouTube update on Android seems to have introduced bugs affecting playback and miniplayer functionality.
- The miniplayer glitch causes the miniplayer to disappear when placed on the right side of the screen. The playback glitch prevents video playback from being resumed when in portraid mode.
- Roll back to an older YouTube version for immediate relief or wait for an official fix from Google.
If the YouTube app on Android is broken for you right now, fret not, you’re not alone.
As part of its recent update, which brought granular playback speed controls to the app, YouTube might have inadvertently also introduced two annoying bugs that are currently plaguing playback on the app.
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As highlighted by users on Reddit (via Android Headlines), the issues include a miniplayer glitch and a playback resumption bug. The former essentially makes the miniplayer disappear when you try to position it on the right side of the screen. In a video example shared by Reddit user a1200i, it looks like the miniplayer exits the screen from the right, only to resurface when the video thumbnail is pressed again. It’s worth noting that we’re not seeing the bug on the latest stable and beta YouTube builds.
Users are blaming the November 7 update
The other bug, as highlighted by user zomby_c, prevents playback from being resumed while in portrait mode. We’re not able to replicate this bug on the latest stable and beta YouTube builds either.
From the short video shared by the user, it looks like when you first play a YouTube video in portrait mode, it plays as expected. Then, if you head into full-screen landscape mode, pause the video, and return to portrait mode, you’ll essentially be unable to resume playback until you head back to the full screen landscape mode. It is currently unclear how two major bugs made their way to so many YouTube users on Android, though most indicate that the issues only started appearing after the November 7 update, suggesting that they slipped through YouTube’s testing phase.
It’s worth noting that rolling back to an older YouTube build seems to have fixed the issue for at least one affected user. Alternatively, you can wait for Google/YouTube to roll out a fix, considering that even though the bugs are really limit functionality, they don’t make the app outright unusable.
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