Background audio
So, without further ado, I'm glad to report that background audio should be finally coming to a YouTube app near you, if all goes well during testing. This feature will let you start a video, exit the app, and switch to something else without the audio stream dying, which is incredibly useful when listening to podcasts or music videos, or just quickly checking an incoming text. Moreover, it should work with the screen off.
Based on my observations of users' comments with every app update, background audio is now one of, if not the most, requested Youtube for Android feature.
While the setting, UI, and the background service for background audio are currently hidden, we managed to reveal the setting long enough to pose for a screenshot and are currently working on a possible Xposed module to enable it on rooted devices. No promises, as this may be a tough task, though if you can help make it happen, you'd instantly become a hero in the eyes of many.
What’s new?
While 5.2.27 does have a whole bunch of changes under-the-hood which are mostly related to the upcoming offline download support, there are, surprisingly, no UI tweaks and new features that you can dive into right now.
Usually, when we see an app go from X.1 to X.2, there is at least something new to play with, but after looking at every screen I could think of, I saw nothing. Outside of the existing and pretty much broken preloading of videos in subscriptions and the Watch later list, offline support that is supposed to let us cache videos for up to 48 hours without a working Internet connection is currently still MIA. Perhaps Google will be able to flip the switch server-side and turn it on in November, or maybe there will be a follow-up update later. 5.2.27 feels like a ticking time bomb, which is strangely exciting.
However, I do have some good great awesome news. We're still combing through all the source files, but I can promise you right now that the APK teardown is coming, and a lot of you will be ecstatic after seeing it. In the meantime, grab the APK and start hunting for more changes.
Download
The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app. The cryptographic signature guarantees that the file is safe to install and was not tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to push this download to your devices, which can take days, download and install it just like any other APK.
File name: com.google.android.youtube-5.2.27.apk.
Version: 5.2.27
MD5: 212e281cf59916852c92e6d3ec3f090d.
