YouTube Premium can significantly improve the videos you watch, with the ability to show no ads, listen to audio with the screen locked on your phone, and the ability to download content to watch offline.
However, at £12.99/$13.99 per month, it’s not the cheapest subscription. Many users have turned to signing up through a VPN as some countries like Turkey, Argentina, and Ghana offer cheaper subscriptions. Therefore, users could trick the app/site into believing that they were based there.
Those days may soon be over.
GoogleWatchBlog first reported receiving the following email from YouTube:
“Your YouTube Premium subscription has been canceled because we believe you did not indicate your actual country of residence when registering for […]. If you want to remain a member, you will need to re-subscribe to YouTube Premium in the coming weeks. Otherwise, you will only be able to access YouTube Premium benefits until [date]. After this date, your membership will not be automatically renewed.
Several other Reddit users also reported that YouTube had deleted their accounts. The company later confirmed to TechCrunch that it was cracking down on users who used this hack.
If you don’t want to go back to the free version of YouTube but also can’t shell out more money, we have some tricks you can try.
How to benefit from the benefits of YouTube Premium at a lower cost
To watch videos in the background on a smartphone, you can use many workarounds. You can watch videos in your browser and control playback via Control Center.
If you reside in the United States, picture-in-picture is available to users at no additional cost. Other people can access this feature with a VPN – as far as we know, YouTube only cracks down on people using this software when it comes to payment. If this changes, we will update this article.
Downloading videos is also possible without a Premium subscription, as many third-party applications offer this service:
The same goes for ad blockers, which can be used on desktops, iPhones, and Android devices:
Finally, if you’re in college or university, you can save money by signing up for a dedicated student subscription.
