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How to disable ‘Video paused. Continue watching’ on YouTube in Chrome

Videos are meant to be watched which means if you’re watching YouTube, the website expects that you haven’t sent it to the background. That’s not how everyone watches YouTube. The website lets you create playlists and if they’re music playlists that you’re listening to, the tab doesn’t really have to be in the front. You can send it to the back or minimize the window that it’s open in. YouTube can’t tell if it’s in the background or not but it can tell if you haven’t interacted with the website in a while and that’s when it will pause the video that’s playing. You will see a ‘Video paused. Continue watching’ prompt. You have to click Yes to continue watching.

To disable the ‘Video paused. Continue watching’ prompt, you have to use an extension called YouTube NonStop. This is a Chrome extension so this solution only applies to Chrome, and also to the Development beta of Edge, if you’re running it.

Install YouTube NonStop from the Chrome Web Store and it will take care of the rest. You can leave YouTube running in the background and the extension won’t stop the video from playing when you haven’t interacted with the website for a long time.

YouTube added this prompt about two years ago. It was sporadic back then and not all users saw it. It seems to only appear if you’re signed in to YouTube and have been ‘watching’ for too long.

The feature is meant to save data, and perhaps even battery if you’re watching on a laptop that isn’t plugged in. If the video keeps playing, it will consume more data, especially if you have autoplay enabled. At the same time, the battery will deplete much faster because you’re playing media in a resource hungry browser. The prompt isn’t without purpose but there should be an option to turn it off.

The extension is passive; you can hide it in the overflow menu or the extensions’ menu. You can’t toggle it On or Off. You can disable it if you want the feature back (or uninstall it) but there’s no off button. If you prefer Firefox over Chrome, there doesn’t seem to be an add-on for it that can get rid of this feature. We mentioned that the prompt doesn’t appear when you watch without signing in. If you can watch without signing in, you may not see the prompt. Of course this means no watch history and you lose access to your playlists and channel subscriptions.

18 Comments

  1. “The feature is meant to save data, and perhaps even battery if you’re watching on a laptop that isn’t plugged in”
    OP is absolutely retarded

  2. Just want to point out that you can disable it with youtube premium, so no you can’t say there’s “a purpose” and not that it just to force people to pay.

  3. Is this extension create any issue regarding battery life or any privacy issue?

  4. Does anybody from you tube saff answers to Alin s qustion ??? HOW TO DISABLE that script from smart TV or android device ???
    Why You Tube had to buy for that kind of rubish to write that script ??? Yep, unrealistic exuses..battarey ….
    STOPP THAT SCRIPT, i want to listen my relaxing 3 hours music backround..cleaning house..not every 10 minutes to click YES button,,,,,,

  5. It is possible to watch your playlists without logging in, but that is if your playlists are public. Just create a shortcut to “my library” and you will have direct access without login.

  6. How cynical are you? 😛 See what I did there?

    Seriously though, You’re not necessarily wrong but nor is Fatima (the author). There are both good people who care about your battery life and greedy people who only care about the bottom line and a whole bunch in between out there and most of them have jobs and there are probably some of both working at Google so you are probably both correct about the company’s motivations. Fatima may be naïve, or just an optimist who prefers to assume the best in people until proven otherwise, like me assuming that you will take this to heart rather than as an attack, because it’s not.

  7. I agree, Google wouldn’t do something to purely benefit their users. It’s a business, and if you aren’t there giving them real usable information on what you’re watching (if you haven’t interacted in a while, they won’t know if you’re actually watching or if it’s just the auto-play cycling through videos in the background – not very useful data on what you as the user actually watch), it won’t be for you that they do this.

  8. It is extremely annoying. It Happens even when I am actually watching. Only started happening in the past month.

  9. Hello everyone \o/

    I’ve made a Chrome browser extension to solve this little pain.
    It does 3 things right now:

    ► Auto confirm if YT asks if we’re still watching a video or listening to music
    ► Auto skip the ads in the beginning of the videos/music
    ► Allows video repetition with a toggle button

    The extension is named YAC – YouTube Auto Confirm, and it was built to be as lightweight as possible. YAC lives here:

    shorturl.at/iyUZ6

    The extension is free to use and will continue so in the future 😉
    YAC will be maintained and supported, it will not be abandoned!

    Cheers! 🥳😁

  10. Ok, I will install YouTube NonStop on my laptop, on chrome., but when I’m using my phone (android) on YouTube app or my Smart TV on YouTube app, how can I “fix” that because there is not any YouTube NonStop?