Firefox for Android extension.
Loads YouTube videos in a simplified player that keeps audio working in the background if you switch tab or app.
- The redirect process is quite clunky and happens after the original YouTube page mostly loaded.
- You can't easily return to the normal YouTube video page or get controls for a video as a one-off. This breaks playlist playback and makes it hard to get a sharing URL, or to like or playlist a video.
- Autoplay doesn't work on Firefox mobile as the flag is ignored by the browser.
See also backgroundfox-embedder which enables the videos to be embedded and makes this work.
This uses a separate site to allow for improvements on the embed page without requiring an extension update every time.
BackgroundFox is still in early testing and not yet published on Mozilla's extension site. If you're feeling brave you can install version 0.1.
- Follow the version 0.1 extension link.
- Click GitHub's Open binary file link and save the file.
- Click the Open button on the notification.
- In the
file:///...address in the address bar, scroll to the end and delete the file name, leaving just the containing folder. Open that address. - In the list of your downloaded files, find
backgroundfox-0.1-an+fx-android.xpi - Click the link and press Allow on the notification that says installation was blocked.