Despite the fact that Google has banned users from Russia from subscribing to YouTube Premium , previously issued subscriptions still work. We even had a separate article on how not to lose access to it . In fact, it is not so difficult and does not require additional investments from you. All you need is to change the payment method to one that is still accepted in the App Store . Another thing is that today there is no longer any objective reason to maintain a YouTube Premium subscription.
If you have already forgotten what YouTube Premium gives , then here is a list of all the benefits of this subscription:
- Lack of advertising inserts and banners;
- Ability to download videos for offline viewing;
- Picture-in-picture mode for viewing in a separate window;
- Play video in the background on the lock screen;
- Access to the YouTube Music streaming service.
YouTube Music in Russia – is it worth using
In general, the list of privileges is worthy. With the possible exception of YouTube music , which, as practice has shown, almost no one in Russia has ever listened to. For some reason, everyone preferred to her either Yandex.Music, access to which is provided by Yandex.Plus subscription, or VKontakte Music, or Apple Music. This is the first reason to unsubscribe from YouTube Premium
Not to say that the number of tracks on YouTube Music is less than on other sites. And in fact, the free access that is provided to it as part of YouTube Premium seems to be supposed to level out all the shortcomings, even if they exist. But, apparently, YouTube’s positioning as a video hosting plays against the platform.
Therefore, in the context of our article, I suggest not considering YouTube Music as an advantage, given that today you can easily move to almost any streaming platform, and absolutely free. However, it is clear that you need more serious reasons. We have those too.
Where did YouTube ads go?
The second reason to unsubscribe from YouTube Premium is the lack of ads. As you probably know, Google has disabled content monetization in Russia. This decision has two implications.
Firstly, all the videos that you watch from the Russian Federation are not interrupted by ads. She is basically absent. Authors’ own integrations don’t count. And, secondly, video views from Russia do not bring money to bloggers – after all, there are no ads.
Picture-in-picture on YouTube on iOS
The fourth reason is the disabling of the picture-in-picture mode . Many may not be aware that this feature was a test. That is, to watch videos in a separate window, it was not enough just to connect to YouTube Premium. In addition to everything, it was necessary to enable picture-in-picture in a special settings section.
Google continued testing this mode for several months. Because of this, many have become so accustomed – literally grown together – with the innovation so much that they have already forgotten about its temporality. And yet, that’s how it was in the beginning.
Late last week, Google dropped picture-in-picture mode from the test menu for some reason. As a result, iOS users — even those who subscribed to YouTube Premium — lost access to this feature, losing the ability to watch videos in a separate window. Whether this feature will return again is still unknown. But, if necessary, you can always force it to do so by following our instructions at this link.
How to download videos from YouTube to iPhone
But among the advantages of YouTube Premium , there was at least one more. This is a video download with offline viewing capability. Thanks to this feature, you can enjoy pre-loaded videos even when you don’t have an internet connection. With a paid subscription, they were downloaded directly to the device’s memory, and they could be accessed from the YouTube app.
We have an alternative method that differs from the official one only in that you need to watch the downloaded videos through the regular player of the iPhone, iPad or any other device that you use. It consists in downloading content from YouTube using a special telegram bot.
Here’s how it works:
- Add a bot-loader to your telegram ;
- Open a chat with him and click “Start”;
- Copy the video link to download;
- Insert it into the chat with the bot and subscribe to the channel that it promotes (then you can unsubscribe);
- Wait for the video to be extracted, download it to your device and watch it offline.
An unpleasant moment is the telegram channel that is promoted by the bot. You need to subscribe to it to download the video. Despite the fact that later it will be possible to unsubscribe from him, this action, in principle, can confuse quite a few. Another unpleasant moment is the slowness of the bot. In my case, at first he refused to download the videos that I threw to him for several minutes, and then he downloaded them all at once.
