Microsoft has found a way to bypass Google's restrictions in a beta version of its Android browser and make background playback of YouTube videos available again for users without a Premium subscription. The feature appeared in the latest Microsoft build Edge Canary.
Google has been making a concerted effort to crack down on any way to take advantage of YouTube Premium for free lately. Earlier this year, it confirmed that it had updated the platform to disable background playback in third-party browsers (such as Samsung Internet, Brave, and Vivaldi). The feature is strictly reserved for paying users.
However, Microsoft was clearly not satisfied with this limitation. In the mobile version Edge A new experimental feature has been discovered in Canary that bypasses this lock, allowing users to switch between tabs, miniclose the browser or even lock the phone without interrupting the video audio.
Google recently removed the option to play YouTube videos in the background on third-party mobile browsers (they say this is a feature intended only for Premium users). Well, Microsoft has found a workaround and this option is working again Edge Canary:https://t.co/E0HPhAdtsB pic.twitter.com/HSFhuHf3oR
– Leopeva64 (@Leopeva64) April 16, 2026
New features in Edge Canary
In addition to background playback itself, Microsoft has also added several useful improvements for multimedia management:
- Sound indicators: The tab switcher now displays a speaker icon for specific pages, so you can immediately see which tab the sound is coming from.
- Quick mute: The option to immediately mute a web page or unmute it has been added to the tab context menu.
Gallery
How to activate the function?
Since this is a Canary beta, the feature is not automatically enabled for everyone. If you want to try it out, you usually need to:
- Download Microsoft Edge Canary from the Play Store.
- Enter in the address bar edge://flags.
- Find the “Video Background Play” item and set it to Enabled.
Restart your browser and then enable background video playback in Site settings. Please note that Canary is for early testing and may nestIt is also likely that Google will try to block this new Microsoft solution again in the near future. Will this feature make it to the stable version of the browser? Edge, not yet confirmed.
